Monday, May 17, 2010

7-8th May, Colchuck Peak

Aaron, James, Andy and I left Seattle just after noon on Friday 7th May with Mt Maude on our minds. That beautiful north face has been on my mind too long now. To get to Mt Maude you have to drive 23 miles up a forest road, and unfortunately 12 miles away from the trail head there was a gate... locked :( Time for plan B! Which probably turned out to be the best plan B in the history of plan Bs. So we headed to Leavenworth and from then on to the Mountaineers creek trailhead, to find our perfect moment on the handsome steep slopes of Colchuck Peak.
We managed to drive within ~300 meters of the trailhead, and the trail was skinnable all the way. Camped just under lake Colchuck as darkness fell to envelope us in dreams of white.

Camp in the morning

The following morning dawned fine, with an inch of fresh that fell overnight and promises of a fantastic day. Made it to Colchuck Lake which is one of the grandest places I've so far seen in this part of the world. Stunning.


Colchuck Lake, Dragontail Pk in the middle, Colchuck Pk on the right

From then a quick skin up to the base of the North Buttress Couloir, which was well filled in.


The North Buttress Couloir is the obvious line ahead of us

The climb to the saddle went quite fast, the snow in the top half was powder, and apart from one brief graupel shower, the weather was holding.


Aaron (top) and Andy climbing up the couloir

Andy and I carried on and traversed onto the North face - I'd read Jason Hummel's description of the route, first skied 7 years ago to the day today, and he's right, what a classic line!! The North face is a touch steeper than the North Buttress Couloir and above a ~200 foot cliff, making the sense of exposure phenomenal.


Traversing onto the North Face from the col



Summit pitch. 50 degrees and powder. Niiiiice...


We found mostly good snow on the face and climbed to the top of the snow line, some 30 feet below the true summit. Worries of incoming showers to our west made us desist the scramble to the top, so we clipped in and began our ski descent. The skiing was superb. What a line. What a line. What a line. The traverse back to the NBC is well filled in so we managed to ski continuously into the couloir, which again had some superb skiing, especially along its skiers right bank, where steep and deep was the name of the game.


Colchuck Peak with our line

We joined Aaron and James at the foot of the couloir and enjoyed nice turns down to the lake. The ski out from camp was fast and fun, especially the section between the two footbridges. All in all an amazing day skiing on an incredible line.

1 comment:

  1. Awesome job guys. I just saw this TR of a snowboarder who had skied this line as well...one that I was unaware of.

    http://www.splitboard.com/talk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=8679&start=0&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

    Enjoy!

    ReplyDelete