Devil's Bedstead (East)

Devil's Bedstead (11,865')

Bob had called on Thursday and wanted to do something on Friday.  I told him that I had been planning on skiing the Devil's Bedstead.  He said that that would work for something to do.

The drive was less eventful than I thought it would be.  Trail Creek road is in excellent condition, as was Kane Creek road.  We were able to make it in to the creek fords.  We parked and started in shoes from here.  By the way, on the map below, I call Kane Creek a river.  It's not. 

All the major creek crossings are bridged.  The trail is very well maintained and we encountered no major deadfall.  

         

Eventually you start up a steep treed ridge.  There is a faint trail all the way to the DBE basin.  We didn't hit snow that we could skin on until around 9,000'.  After that, it was a very straightforward climb.

At the top, we transitioned, ate a PB&J sandwich and started down the face.

The top was breakable crust.  Then for about 100 feet it was hardpack.  After all that, it turned to glorious corn!  In perfect conditions, this would by far be my favorite Idaho classic descent!  The choice of lines is amazing.  I stayed in the center until the lower rock bands and then traversed skier's right.

The trip out was difficult due to the bottomless slush lower down.  Eventually we were back at the Suby and inching out Kane Creek road.  To make it a perfect day, we stopped and had a burrito at KB's!

Bench to Fishhook Ski Traverse

Mark, Jared, Chris and I started at the main trailhead at around 8 a.m. and took the Bench Lakes trail.  We walked in ski boots for a mile or so.  There is a lot of snow left up in the Sawtooths, but the trails are choked with debris in the lower elevations where there is no snow.

We skinned past the trail to the lower Bench lake and continued onward and upward.  We then booted across the narrow ridge below the Thumb.

Almost to the Thumb!

The snow was very nice all the way to the lake.  Excellent turns were enjoyed by all!  At the lake we transitioned back to skins and started a traverse to meet up with the top of the Gun Barrel couloir.

Turns down from the Thumb

En route to the top of The Gun Barrel

In no time we were sitting at the top of The Gun Barrel eating lunch.  We were all very surprised by the weather.  There were clouds threatening us all day, but none ever encroached our blue sky.  I was the lucky one to drop into the couloir first.  The top third was glorious.  The middle third was filled with chunder from the walls.  The lower third was once again glorious.

The Gun Barrel

The fun was over and the work began.  We skied as far as we could down the Fishhook.  We were where the trail began when we transitioned to boots.  The "trail" was about as easy to follow as ant tracks across the sidewalk.  As three of us wandered into a swamp, Mark walked over to the trail.  Once on the trail, we made really good time.  We were back to the trailhead before 6 p.m.  I hate to sound cliche', but it was truly another great day in the Alpine!

McGown N. Couloir (April 30th)

Jared, Chris, Bob and I skied this beauty on McGown.  Snow conditions on the way up were perfect.  We were all dreaming of the turns on the way down.  But alas, the sun touched our line and dashed the hope of excellent snow.  No worries.  It was still nice.

Since we had four people we ran a peloton up and it was nice to not get too worked booting up.  It was good to save some energy for the skin out on the flat road back to the van.

The Sickle.

Skied the Sickle Couloir off of the shoulder of Horstmann on Saturday.  Great weather all day.  It was a long slog due to the road still being buried.  It was worth it.

It's a classic steep line that I am glad to have been able to do this year.  Some friends slogged into it last week and nailed it and so I was lucky to have inside information that it was good to go!  Thanks!

There's a few more classics on the list this year.  As my friend Bob says, "It's better to be lucky than good!"  I hope he's right!

Terminal Cancer Couloir

After watching the weather for the last two weeks, I decided that yesterday would be the best opportunity to go down to the Ruby mountains and ski the TC couloir.  I have never been in the Rubies.  There seems to be a lot of motorized recreation.  In fact, we were the only backcountry skiers NOT using a helicopter.

Here is the trailhead.  There are so many coolies to explore here that if I lived here, my car would be here a lot!

The approach to this classic line is less than 15 minutes from the car.  It's on the buttress to the lookers right.

The depth of the snow made for a brutal booter, but awesome descent.

The view from the road is deceptive.  The line appears very steep, but is not more than 35 degrees and is very consistent.  I was pleased.  The other funny expectation I had was that it was going to end in a dramatic saddle, kinda like most Sawtooth coolies.  You get to the top and there is another MUCH larger mountain RIGHT behind it.

Bob wanted me to take a picture of him crossing the creek.  Most people don't want a camera around when crossing a water feature in ski boots.  I obliged, but he never fell in as per our agreement.

We did it as a day-trip.  It made for a long day, but I think it was worth it to ski the line in good condition.  I highly recommend it.  I will even go down there with you...  if you drive.

More Bull Trout Point

The conditions allowed us to ski some of the North side of Bull Trout on Saturday.  Excellent snow.

Bull Trout Point

Greg and I had planned on climbing an ice flow that I noticed was in 10 days ago.  The only problem is that it was warm AND had rained since then.  The icicle had fallen and the beautiful blue ice below was now foamy white.  So much for ice climbing.  Luckily, we were going to have to skin back into the ice, so we had all of our touring gear.  We decided that since we were only 20 minutes from Copper that we may as well go skiing.

Once at the pull-out I told Greg that maybe instead of going to cliche' Copper, we should go to the Bull Trout Point ridge.  He didn't take too much convincing!

The skin in is easy once past the thicker trees on the lower slope.  The snow just got better and better the higher we got.  We didn't go all the way to the true summit.  We stopped at the first false summit and skied the face you can see from the road.

We skinned back up and skied the ridge to the bottom.  The snow on the lower ridge turned to corn.  It was almost a surprise to have such great snow conditions.

We cut through the trees and were on flat ground.  Somebody had pulled a BIG sled down Bull Trout road with snowshoes.  What a cool place to spend a few days in the winter.  Lucky people.  

Happy Birthday Greg!  Hope you had a good one!