Memorial Day 2023

The annual Memorial Day trip started back in 1999 with an attempt on South Maroon Peak, and over the years it has never failed to disappoint. Since this is only the 24th anniversary I'll save the nostalgic recap of the past in favor of a recount of this year's adventure. I had a group of 3 buddies, Gabe, Marcel and Steve, up for camping a few nights, and then I was planning on meeting my brother Mike on Monday somewhere for a ski. End of year school activities, high school graduations, and general family duties made it challenging to go all in for most, but with my daughter's high school graduation and party the week before Memorial Day, I had full availability, but no ski buddies, so I'd be hiking and skiing solo, but chilling with the boys at the camp. This sounded like some semblance of a plan to me. so here we go.

Clinton Peak and McNamee
5/26/2023
10.82 miles
3,183 ft
7:29 total time

I departed the house on Friday around 3:30am, It's always tough leaving the family behind in the middle of the night, but since we are able to keep in touch through texts and what not, it eases the pain a little bit. There was virtually no traffic up 285 as I made the drive up to Montgomery Reservoir and started hiking around 5:30am. Clinton Peak is a ways back in the valley following a gnarly 4wd road.

The hike up the road was kind of a pain, bypassing some small lakes on the trail that required getting off the road through some bushwhacking off trail, which, with the diagonal carry ski had me stuck and reversing course several times, there were about 10 of these puddle passes on the way up until the road turned to mainly snow around 11,500 after slogging for about an hour. Followed the snow covered road, up into the Wheeler Lake basin. That's a pretty cool area in spring time.

On the way up I noticed some huge chutes coming off of south side of Lincoln, I knew about the north face Democrat routes back here, but hadn't heard anything about the south chutes so I took a selfie in front of them for future reference. After that, I made it up into the big basin below Clinton and started skinning up when I got stymied by some steep slopes around 13,500, luckily I was able to dig myself a little platform and make the transition to crampons.

Made it to the summit of Clinton around 10am, looking around I noticed that the other peaks McNamee and Traver were pretty close by, so I figured I'd ski the bowl of Clinton down and over as close to the Traver saddle and then climb up McNamee, ski back down to the saddle and do the same for Traver. Clinton Peak is very close to Climax mine, the juxtaposition of the mountains and mines serves as a reminder of the delicate balance we all walk, while I may decry the scars of the mines in the mountains, there's no way I'm skiing these peaks without steel edges.

Made it to the summit of McNamee, storm clouds were building now, and when I saw a bolt of lighting down the valley around the reservoir, I decided to bail on Traver and high tail it out of there down to some relative safety at the lower elevation. Fortunately, the snow was nice and supporting, skied a good line through the valley, stayed skiers right above Wheeler Lake and got some good steep turns in down to the intersection with the road and the comfort of the valley. Fortunately the storm stayed more or less off in the distance, now all I had to do was re-slog the road and back to the car. Caption

We were camping up at Horseshoe Campground outside of FairPlay, so I packed things up and made my way down to camp where Gabe had started setting up camp. After the usual food, camaraderie and general merriment that accompanies an evening of camping in Colorado, it was off to bed with my eyes set on a ski descent of Fletcher Peak's south east face from Blue Lakes.

Fletcher Mountain
5/27/2023
5.95 miles
2,288 ft
5:49 total time

I made it to the Blue Lakes trailhead around 6am, there were quite a few parties heading for the Cristo Couloir, and it looked to be another great day out. After hiking and skinning for about an hour up into the basin between the west ridge and Fletcher I saw another lone soul wandering the slopes, it turned about to be KansasBoarder and we got to chatting about the days of yore, corn snow and the good ole days of TGR. He ended up deciding to take a sick line up a chute to gain the west ridge, it was fun watching his progress from across the valley. That's a magical basin back there, with the west ridge and fletcher and north stars chutes surrounding you, mind bending beauty.

I climbed my way up the basin, a few transitions between skins and crampons to navigate the headwalls and flats. I eyed a climbing route of the south east ridge, and a nice wide gully heading skiers right off the summit taking you a little higher in the basin, but with more continuous snow. It's go time.

Back to the car, packed up, back down the highway, back to camp to meet up with my buddies for some more camping fun, Gabe, Marcel and Steve were all in full effect this weekend, as much as I enjoy spending time by myself in the mountains, it's nothing compared to good times spent with good friends with all your worries left behind.

Pennsylvania Mountain
5/28/2023
4.78 miles
1,306 ft
2:53 total time

After a nice night of music, food, wine and more general merriment, I slept in on Sunday, while the guys packed up, had some coffee, a little breakfast, but by 11am everyone was gone and I was left alone with my thoughts, that's never a good thing, so I set my sights on Pennsylvania Mountain to ski if I could scratch out a hike and ski, after being spun around several times by google maps I made it to the trailhead at a soul lifting elevation of 11,900 feet, with Pennsylvania just above 13k, I gotta think it's gonna be a good day. For today, I decided to don the trail runners and most of the ridge looked dry, there was a small bowl holding snow on the eastern side that looked skiable, so off I was, through the willows, some deep postholes, but short lived. The ridge of this peak is wide and broad, kind of a cool place to be, and not another soul around past the willows. I made it to the summit and contrived a summit ski descent, down the bowl, all without removing my skis and skied down the basin to about 12,500 feet and then contoured my way around to join up with the main route and back to the car in under 3 hours, a rewarding down day.

Back to the car, with a minor Nalgene mishap, I headed back to Horseshoe campground to breakdown camp and head to Spruce creek TH to meet Mike there at 5am for an attempt at skiing Pacific Peak. The road to the campground is awfully bumpy, but not too bad, quite a few out and backs this weekend, but that region is a nice place to camp, although the 10,500 elevation kept the temps cool all weekend. Back at camp, I took my time breaking down the camp and packing up the car. I drove to Breckenridge to try to find a replacement Nalgene, but alas, all the markets were closed, but a different sort of trader lurked about, just a taste they said. I ended up at the trailhead around 9pm and slept in the car, threading the needle of a no camping zone, is sleeping in your car camping, what do you think? Let me know in the comments below!

Pacific Peak
5/29/2023
8.9 miles
3,022 ft
9:16 total time

After a nice night of rest, Mike arrived at the TH at 5am and we bounced our way up the Spruce Creek road for about a mile to a nice parking area. Packed up and hiking up the road by 5:45am, we hiked up the road, through the falls area, by Mohawk Lakes, up one of the Hawaii couloirs, across a bit of talus to a beautiful continuous strip of snow right to the summit of Pacific. Getting up that Peak is a lot of work, compared to Crystal one basin over it felt like 5x the effort, but well worth it. The ski down both the upper slopes and the Hawaii couloir was nice, surprisingly consistent. It was great having some company on this trip, and not just any company, but my brother Mike, whom I love like a brother. Great work on this one bro!

After bashing our way through the trees and getting pretty cut up, negotiating some lower cliffs, trying to follow any snow we could and a full face plants in mank we finally decided to switch back over to hiking just above the lowest headwall. Good call, that ski out was getting scary, better to err on the side of caution here. The hike out was kind of a mess but not too bad, lots of trails and roads, even with GPS I got off route for 1/4 mile. Nevertheless we made it back to the car around 2pm. That peak is full value up that route, or any route for that matter, definitely required some moxie. After chilling in the lot for a bit, before we said our good byes, we gave thanks to those who gave their life defending this country, so we can go out and enjoy this freedom. This year my daughter made her first trip to DC, and she got to go to the Vietnam Memorial, where she found the name Leo R Mullen, her great uncle, my Dad's brother, on the wall. We remember these things, we share these experiences together to honor those who have fallen and to remember to never take anything for granted.