Deming Drop Couloir, Deming Mountain
(12,906 ft)
Couloir season. A man's best friend. Its a great time of year when the snowpack is starting to stabilize out a bit with steeper lines and routes we have been looking at all season are starting to come into play. Time for another go at the Deming Drop. Gary had messaged me expressing interest in a go at the Drop and so the plans were set in motion to give her a go. Frank Bowman and Scott Winn had another Gore mission planned but decided to join us on the venture and so with a good crew in place we headed out from Meadow Creek TH at about 6:30AM. We made good work of the ascent and soon found ourselves at the Deming Massif. We opted to ascend the East Face directly as we felt pretty good about the snowpack and temps. The wind picked up as we got higher and we found ourselves on a windy Deming summit about 5 hours later from the TH.
5 hours later we found ourselves 12,900ft high on a windy (50mph?) summit of Deming Mountain. Man do the views around here suck...
While enduring the strong winds we quickly transitioned and soon started our way to the North face towards the entrance to Deming Drop putting us into the Gore Creek drainage.
I opted to take some pictures from up a bit higher as Gary, Frank, and Scott dropped first. We found cold smoke all the way through the couloir. Pow couloir skiing? Why yes, thank you!!
Smiles for miles! What a great line and especially getting it in such great conditions! From here we hung out and ate some lunch or a little bit before finding and heading up our exit saddle to bring us back into Meadow Creek. The Gore Creek drainage is quite intimidating!!
Once we reached the saddle we skinned back up to Pt. 12,435 to enjoy a nice open face bonus ski back to the bottom of the basin.
Its always a great feeling to complete a successful mission into the Gore. This is such a beautiful line and is one of hundreds in the Range. I can't wait to get back out again for another tour in the wonderful Rocky Mountains!