Mt Guyot

• mileage: 3.83 (human)
• elevation gain: 1,681' (human)
• trailhead: Swan River Rd
• partners: Bill, Zach, Nick, Alex, Hunter, Dave

After a bit of back and forth on peak and line choice, we settled on the Swan Dive on Guyot. Guyot was one of the first 13ers I had ever skied, but I only skied the lower angle north face with a bunch of snowshoers. That was a lesson on getting back to the trailhead hours before the slow-shoers!

We'd also get the benefit of Bill's snow machines for easy access to the east ridge of Guyot. Thankfully I got to ride behind Zach and the other guys got pulled. Alex would skin to the summit, as he'd had enough of being pulled as a part of Summit County's SAR team. So we'd meet him up there. To set all this up, we had multiple car shuttles. We didn't want to clog the trailhead with vehicles, so we left 2 cars lower. But then we couldn't park where the snow started, so we dropped gear before dropping vehicles lower and walking back to the snow.

From there we got our gear on the machines and loaded up! Fun fun!

As we started off, it became obvious soon that Zach's unprotected ax on his backpack was going to cause me problems. It was sitting in a very sensitive area between my thighs, and even the shaft of the ax was in my face. So I just had to spread my legs wide to avoid the unprotected ax. It only scraped my leg once. At a midway break, we moved his ax to my backpack, where it couldn't violate anyone! I've never been touched by an ax quite like that before!

From our special trailhead, we slapped skins on our skis and started up the first part of the ridge.

Soon enough the snow got thinner, and we switched to booting up. With so many in the group, most took a turn on leading. Thankfully I didn't have to lead, since the next person would just punch through my steps anyway.

When we got closer to the upper ridge to the summit, Alex arrived and let us know about another 2 groups coming up the other side, also wanting to ski the Swan Dive. So we hurried the F on up!

Since we had beat the other groups to the summit, we could relax a little bit, but still transitioned quickly. Alex was ready first, since he had been waiting an hour on the summit for us, despite starting later than us. Sleds have some advantages, but not always in time.

We headed down the line more or less in the order of summitting, except for the photogs.

So with all this powder flying, I had hopes of some good conditions, but we could also see it was punchy in spots. So I knew I had to ski the line a bit more carefully, since I hate punchy conditions after breaking my leg in similar snow. Let's just say I skied the line triggered...

With the variable heavy snow, punch crust, hardback, powder between every other turn, it was an exhausting line to ski. When conditions were good, I'd link 4-5 turns together, but when it was punchy, it was much slower. I was quite triggered by conditions, considering my recent history with this kind of snow. Meanwhile Zach was a string of non-stop cursing, that could heard by the group at the base.

We stayed as far right as possible to reach the lower sled, but still missed it by 300' some feet. Bill and Zach dropped their gear and went and got the 2 sleds.

We skied down lower until the terrain got flat, then I jumped on the sled with Zach. Hunter had to start the pull earlier, being on a board. But Dave and Nick skied the lowest on the route. I was done when the skating started, haha! When you're using the cheat mobiles, then you don't have to work too hard!