What a better way to spend Halloween than outside skiing with some friends. We had a couple of inches on the Divide from a brief storm the day before and decided to head out to Stevens Gulch in hopes of possibly skiing Lost Rat couloir on Grays. I called up Greg Hansen on Wednesday night to join and at 6AM the next morning I was out the door to meet up with Greg and Jodi Fairbanks. We were luckily able to drive all the way to the summer TH on a few inches of fresh snow and geared up from there. The weather called for a 50% chance of snow for the day coupled with high winds in the 20-24 (40G) range. The 50% chance turned more into 100% as it lightly snowed on us throughout the day. The winds were also howling pretty good but we decided to keep on keeping on until we found something, or got turned around from snowpack conditions. Usually, you can see Lost Rat not far from the TH but with the wind and blowing snow we weren't able to get a complete look at it all day. At the sign near the head of the drainage we decided against Lost Rat and to instead follow the summer trail around to see if we would find any lines off the saddle.
Once we reached the ridge we decided to poke around a bit because there was a fun looking couloir that I could see from the sign that I wanted to find. It wasn't long before I found it and upon seeing the line we knew that this could be a good choice for the day. So out came the shovel and down into the couloir I went to assess the snowpack. It was times like this that I wish I had brought my short rope for a little belay, but I was able to work my way down the wall of the couloir comfortably to dig a few pits.