CC Rider Couloir, Peak C
Group: Frank Bowman and Mark Koob
July 8th. While most people have summer on the brain with activities like mountain biking, rafting, fishing, ect.. There are some out there who are still jonesin' to get out on their ski's/snowboards. Its been a busy summer my way with long consecutive work days and so when I finally had a day off amongst the madness I had to be sure to take advantage of it. Frank hit me up last week wanting to climb and ski Peak C in the Gore and I was bummed that work would hinder me from joining. Then, luckily for me I got a text from him saying that they weren't able to make it happen for some reason and so being available the following week I tried to convince Frank for another go. The week passed and with no plans solidified the night before I was finally able to convince Frank on the mission and he then recruited Mark Koob to round out the crew. We met at Blue Moon at 5am and then set off west towards Red Sandstone Rd. where we had an 11mile drive into the base of the Gore Range at Piney River Ranch. We gathered our gear, had a quick safety briefing, and were off and on trail by 6:30.
It wasn't long before we found ourselves at the base of our route up and into the C-D basin. We picked our way up through some slabs and scree and found a fairly "easy" ascent route into the basin.
Once we reached the basin we were greeted with outstanding views! What a spectacular area. We got a good look at our intended route as we snapped some photos and made our way to the base of the couloir.
Once we hit snow we transitioned into our boots, stashed our hiking boots and made our way up the couloir. The snow was perfect boot-able corn all the way up, as well as on the ski down.
Once we reached what we thought was our direct line across the face and to the summit, we veered left and followed the snow. It ended up that we got onto the face a little bit too early but were able to manage to hike one shelf higher and follow it until about 60 ft or so from the summit.
And 4.5 hours later from the TH we reached our summit! Quite possibly my favorite Gore Range summit view so far! Just amazing! We hung out on the summit for a bit and ate some food while soaking in the beauty that surrounded us and scoping future lines for next winter.
Then it was time to saddle up and have some fun! We were toying around with either hiking down the ridge to the top of the couloir proper or to ski the face directly and drop into the couloir. We opted for the latter and after a short down-climb we strapped in and the fun began!
Super stoked on getting the line in, especially for July 8th! We ended up being able to ski about 1500ft. Once we reached our shoe cache I discovered that the Pika's had a good lunch of leather and salt. Ha, at least I still had my shoe strings intact. We exchanged high fives with smiles for miles and then transitioned and made our way back down into and out of the valley where we had some nice and cold beers waiting for us at the car. A great summer ski day in the books! This might be my last ski of the "season", and oh what a ski season to remember!