Weather forecast for the day called for a high of -1°F with winds 14-18 G29 and a wind chill of -37°F. A brisk day in the rockies but we can't let that stop us from enjoying the presence of the mountains. Ahead of the Artic cold front we had a nice dump of snow across the state favoring the central region where we had well over a foot of the good stuff fall. Although we found some nice stable snow today on southerly faces(besides snow sliding off steep rock faces), avalanche hazards were raised to high on Wednesday. We saw this first hand on a tour up Dry Gulch. While the zone we skied has seen a lot of skier compact all season, we did see both natural slide activity and cracking/ collapsing along the valley floor. This was to be expected from the heavy load of new snow on weaker layers that have been forming over the past month. We played it safe while still enjoying some nice face shots for a few runs that day. Thursday we saw the clouds clear for most of the day and the sun out for a beautiful but brisk cold day. I ended up feeling sick and had errands to take care of so I took the day off but in hindsight it was the window that we missed for our objective today. . .
Greg Dumas and I had been in contact over the past week wanting to get out today for a good tour around the area. We ended up deciding to head into the backyard for an attempt at a line I had been looking at on the south side of Red Peak. We both knew it was going to be a cold and low visibility day but we were both willing to go for it. We both completely underestimated the amount of time it would take and ended up falling about 1500ft or so shy of the summit. Never underestimate a Gore bushwack, especially in winter and after a good snowfall. We were on the trail by 630am and at the bottom of Silver shortly after 8oclock. That was the quick and easy part. Once past the falls the trail was quickly lost and the wacking begins. Downed trees and mini creeks everywhere was the name of the game for the next few hours as from there we didn't find ourselves at the bottom of the chute we intended to climb until a little before 12oclock. Already over 5 hours in we knew that time was working against us as I had to be back in town for a fundraiser in Breck by 4oclock. We figured that because we would be able to ski out most of the way that we had about 3 hours or so to get back to the car and so from there we decided to climb up as quickly and as high as we could for the next 30 min or so. After that we would get to savor as many turns as we the terrain would allow. We made it about 3/4 of the way up the chute and to about 11,500ft. It was at that point we realized that it was time to turn around, to savor what turns we had below us, and to return another day to complete the mission. I couldn't be disappointed as my last two Gore missions had come out with success. You can't win them all!
Our ascent gully. While skinning up we did see quite a bit of natural slides most of them being off of steep rock faces, which is to be expected. We saw no other signs of instability throughout the skin and when we started up the gully the depth of the snow drastically decreased. Most of the snow throughout the gully was only a couple of feet deep with deeper windloaded pockets here and there. We did see some of the new snow stiffening up into a windslab but it was infrequent.