What Big Eyes You Have Couloir, Red Peak
Group: Greg Hansen on March 25th 2014
Two days and two nights of winter camping. I have been waiting for this all season. This is Part 1 of the trip as I am breaking it down by missions just for my TR records. The plan starts over a month back where Joel Paula and I had originally made plans to head out for a few days of camping in the Sangre De Cristo mountain range in hopes of skiing around the Crestone's. Plans fell through on traveling so far and so new ideas started to come to mind. One of my ideas was to stay local and head over into the backyard of the Gore range and camp out for a few nights and ski a few lines from one base-camp. My eyes have been set on heading up the Willow Creek drainage and post up at the base of the Red Mountain and Mt Silverthorne Massif. The two lines I had in mind were the North facing couloir off of Red, Big Eyes, and then the Easter Bunny couloir that drops East off of Rain's South Ridge. I had a few backup lines in mind as well just in case things didn't go as planned and those were either Little Red Riding Hood or the mini Catcher's Mitt off of Red, and then Graupel Gully off of Rain.
A few weeks go by until we are about a week out from the trip. The plans still not solidified as snowpack and other factors play on the decision of what to do. Then Joel ended up having to bail due to the death of his grandfather in Florida (Again my condolences Joel). Shit. I didn't want to have to bail on this one. I could still possibly do a few day trips to make up for the camping? But then again, not my style to give up so early. I instantly got on Facebook and sent out a message to 20+ friends in hopes that one person could swing the plan. It still wasn't looking good. It wasn't until the night before the planned trip that I got in contact with Greg Hansen who said he was down. Fuck yea! The plan was back in action. With the weather cooperating and the snowpack in my mind agreeing with at least an attempt at those lines, we both were game to go for my aforementioned plan. Greg had to work on Monday until 4pm and so the plan was to head out Monday afternoon to find and setup camp and then go for Big Eyes on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon we would break trail and scope out Easter Bunny Couloir. Early on Wednesday we would go for Easter Bunny and then afterward break camp and head back by Wednesday afternoon, before the next storm system was due to arrive.
Monday Afternoon: Find Camp
I picked up Greg from work at Keystone a little after 4pm where we went to his house to grab his gear and then back to mine. Tiana then drove us to the Willowbrook TH where we grabbed our gear, said our goodbyes, and were off. Fortunately, Greg knew of a different TH in EaglesNest that cut off about 30min of approach. We started on the trail at about 5:45pm in route to find our camp. I pull out my camera to take the first picture of the trip only to find lens was broke. Yeehaw. At least I still had my tele lens but a lot of the pics that follow are GoPro. We made decent work of getting back into the drainage and about 3 miles away found a good camp right as the last light was fading away. Camp was in a big meadow in a perfect location between our two intended ski lines with great pano views of Red, Zodiac Ridge, East Thorne, and Rain. For purposes of the TR we will call camp Big Meadow Camp as it is the biggest meadow before the lakes. We got camp all setup, drank some coffee, cooked some Mountain House, gazed at this beautiful location we were in, and then hit the sack with the nerves going in excitement of the next days ski.
I picked up Greg from work at Keystone a little after 4pm where we went to his house to grab his gear and then back to mine. Tiana then drove us to the Willowbrook TH where we grabbed our gear, said our goodbyes, and were off. Fortunately, Greg knew of a different TH in EaglesNest that cut off about 30min of approach. We started on the trail at about 5:45pm in route to find our camp. I pull out my camera to take the first picture of the trip only to find lens was broke. Yeehaw. At least I still had my tele lens but a lot of the pics that follow are GoPro. We made decent work of getting back into the drainage and about 3 miles away found a good camp right as the last light was fading away. Camp was in a big meadow in a perfect location between our two intended ski lines with great pano views of Red, Zodiac Ridge, East Thorne, and Rain. For purposes of the TR we will call camp Big Meadow Camp as it is the biggest meadow before the lakes. We got camp all setup, drank some coffee, cooked some Mountain House, gazed at this beautiful location we were in, and then hit the sack with the nerves going in excitement of the next days ski.
Let the fun begin...
First sight of East Thorne.
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East East summit of Red
Pink sunset through the trees..
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Tuesday: The Better to See You With
Alarm off at 5:30am as we awaken out of the tent to a clear and starry sky. Boil some water for coffee and start to get ready for the day. We were fortunately able to scope our ascent route on our way in to camp and so had a pretty good idea of our route to the summit. As always things take longer winter camping and so we were on our skis by about 6:30am. We quickly found our ridge and up we went as we were graced with an amazing sunrise. We also got great views of Easter Bunny Couloir and the Mt Silverthorne Massif. Once we got above treeline the sun was out and the wind came with it. Its not Colorado without wind right? The entire time above treeline we were getting blasted with wind until we finally made our way to the summit of East East Red a little over 3 hours later. After taking some pictures we then eventually down-climbed our way to the top of Big Eyes. Holy Shit! If this entrance doesn't get the juices flowing then there is something wrong with you!
Torreys and Grays
Mt Silverthorne massif
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First light Easter Bunny.
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summit shot.
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and then.... BOOM!
BIG EYES
So the plan from the start was to find an anchor to set up for some belayed ski cuts. As you can see from the above picture, the top can have the tendency to be quite intimidating. Steep, open funnel directly into the first choke. Luckily, I found a perfect horn just in the fall line that we wanted to ski cut and then slung her up and we discussed our plans and got ready to go. The horn was directly above the left of the footprints in the above photo. Once ready and set up to go, Greg belayed me down as I put in about 4 or so "falling leaf" ski cuts as I tried to get something to react. Nothing. The snow felt pretty good. A bit variable but felt manageable. We then discussed our plans further and I took myself off belay and rode down to our first safety zone on riders right. Again, a bit variable with some sluff management but it felt good to go. Greg then gathered the rope and gear and radioed in his drop. This is what preceded and followed.....aka Greg's photo shoot
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A photo I took later in the day. Definitely one of my all-time favorite lines..
Soon enough we found ourselves skiing out the apron and exchanging high fives in the sunshine. Supremely stoked on getting that line in we both had permagrin the rest of the day. Being that it wasn't even noon yet, we found our way back to camp and chilled out hard while eating lunch and soaking in the rays. At about 3 oclock or so we decided to head out and break trail towards Salmon lake so that we would have a trail to follow early in the dark of morning.
Big Meadow camp.
Boing Boing.
Zodiac Ridge.
Back at Big Meadow Camp. Time to eat and chill.
coffee and matte
At about 3pm or so we headed out to break trail towards Salmon Lake for the next mornings mission. We got great views of the mornings ski and surrounding lines.
Big Bad Wolf
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Red Diamond Ridge
East East summit of Red. Little Red Riding Hood lookers left off summit with Big Eyes dropping straight down off summit.
Salmon Lake.
We ended up skinning to the other side of the lake and then decided to head back to camp and cook up some dinner..
Getting warm.
We enjoyed a good meal of some Kathmandu curry and beef stroganoff and then watched as the sun went down and the stars came out.
no tripod night shots
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blurry Orion
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Shortly after that we went to bed. I know that personally I was already stoked and satisfied with what we had accomplished for the trip. My tiredness helped me sleep but my excitement for Easter Bunny didn't help as we had a 4:30am wake up call for Wednesday morning. The EB was one I wasn't sure if we were going to get. There is definitely not a lot of beta up on this one..which I tend to prefer
Read Part 2 here....Part 2; Easter Bunny Couloir
