Unnamed 13255 Trip Report 04/21/2025

Report Type	Mini
Peak(s)	Unnamed 13255 - 13,255 feet
Date Posted	04/21/2025
Modified	04/25/2025
Date Climbed	04/20/2025
Author	SnowAlien

Little Willow ski descent
Closing day at Snowmass and I got a day off! Liba and I hiked Baldy and UN 13,255 for my birthday in January a few years ago, but we just took a ridge there and back and skied down the resort. Let's see what I can find this time. I ended up on Baldy within 40 minutes or so after leaving the backcountry gate and decided to keep going. The weather was unsettled, but I was hoping to see some views. I kept the skins on for the traverse to 13,255 (sometimes called Little Willow) and got partial views on the summit, sadly no views of the Bells this time. Initially I was thinking to ski the west gully/couloir into the East Snowmass creek drainage, but the coverage on the west aspects looked very sparse. However there were a bunch of ski tracks dropping east into the Willow creek. The drainage didn't look very friendly on my topo map, but the tracks kept going that way so I decided to see what I find. There were a few steep and tricky drop-offs, but the line kept going until I got into the Willow drainage proper. For a grizzled veteran of the Conundrum creek, this was nothing new. Snow got sparse and eventually ended around 9,700 feet (for nearly 4k descent). At that point, I had to decide - do I want to keep going for several more miles mostly on dirt and end up in Maroon Creek without a shuttle, or to reclimb roughly 1,300 ft back into the ski area? I chose the latter, and to my pleasant surprise, after a few hundred feet of dry ground I found a skin track leading back to the resort. The total stats ended up being 2,400 ft up and 6,400 ft ski descent and around 10 miles roundtrip. Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Little Willow ski descent

Closing day at Snowmass and I got a day off! Liba and I hiked Baldy and UN 13,255 for my birthday in January a few years ago, but we just took a ridge there and back and skied down the resort. Let's see what I can find this time. I ended up on Baldy within 40 minutes or so after leaving the backcountry gate and decided to keep going. The weather was unsettled, but I was hoping to see some views. I kept the skins on for the traverse to 13,255 (sometimes called Little Willow) and got partial views on the summit, sadly no views of the Bells this time.

Initially I was thinking to ski the west gully/couloir into the East Snowmass creek drainage, but the coverage on the west aspects looked very sparse. However there were a bunch of ski tracks dropping east into the Willow creek. The drainage didn't look very friendly on my topo map, but the tracks kept going that way so I decided to see what I find. There were a few steep and tricky drop-offs, but the line kept going until I got into the Willow drainage proper. For a grizzled veteran of the Conundrum creek, this was nothing new. Snow got sparse and eventually ended around 9,700 feet (for nearly 4k descent). At that point, I had to decide - do I want to keep going for several more miles mostly on dirt and end up in Maroon Creek without a shuttle, or to reclimb roughly 1,300 ft back into the ski area? I chose the latter, and to my pleasant surprise, after a few hundred feet of dry ground I found a skin track leading back to the resort.

The total stats ended up being 2,400 ft up and 6,400 ft ski descent and around 10 miles roundtrip.

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

TakeMeToYourSummit	Nice Route! 4/22/2025 2:00pm Friends & I have discussed this more than a few times over the years. Stoked you got this! Based on pic 8 - it looks like we beat you up Baldy - or from what we can tell (or you were on the ridge to the 2nd peak). I have a pic from Baldy right before that group did the big skin to that ridge off of West Willow (also called Little Willow in some ski groups). That sub-bowl off of 13,255 is typically referred to as Waterfall Basin. They used to have some of this on display in the main ticket office of Snowmass before a couple of years ago. :( For anyone reading this... don't follow the Willow drainage out - T-Lazy 7 Ranch has threatened trespassing many times on folks over the years. The regain up West Willow to the resort is the correct return (a friend & I did this a couple of years ago after getting the dogleg bowl off of 12,341 - East Sievers to some). In any case - what a great closing weekend in our little corner of the world!
9patrickmurphy	Little Willow 4/26/2025 3:41pm UN 13,350 = "Willow Peak" UN 13,255 = "Little Willow Peak" I don't think these unofficial names are published anywhere so they won't show up here or on LoJ, but they are the local names for these peaks that I'm aware of.
SnowAlien	Little Willow 4/25/2025 9:55am Thanks for the correction. I knew that UN 13,350 ft was Willow since there's a report on that one. I was thinking originally to reclimb back to the ridge after the first 600 feet of skiing, but to my surprise there was no skintrack and all tracks went down. The initial descent was very fun (Waterfall basin?) similar to upper Bear Creek in Telluride, but once I got in the Willow creek, it was slow going. Reclimb out wasn't really that bad at all and I ended up in the spot where the routes from Baldy come out as well. Overall a nice loop and the skin/ski ratio is one of the best I can think of!

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