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For a couple years now I have been eyeing a ski of Emperor(like everyone else), but never seemed to make the time to ski it. This year though, it was priority number one and with a good week of dry weather I figured this past Saturday would be a great day to give "one of longest couloirs in Colorado" a go. And since there hasn't been a ski report on Emperor in a long while, I figured I'd write it up.
I met my skiing and running buddy, Terrence, at my house at 2:55 am and we were driving toward the mountain by 3:15 am. We both have families to get back to so we were hoping to make quick work of the road and be back home by 11:30, of course my time estimates are always a little too optimistic.
In Georgetown we stopped to get some fuel and take a quick bathroom break. While chatting with some hikers about their mornings plans, the cashier overhearing mine, quipped "You know its landslide and snow slide season," I replied that I did. After checkout, I thanked her for her concern, which prompted a response of "the last time some fools went up Torreys it took 20 people to get them out." me: "Oh, well, I guess this fool is going up." The scowl she gave me indicated that she did not appreciate my remark.
We got to the Bakerville exit and made our way up to a nice parking spot on the road, by around 4:20. Within, twenty minutes we were on our way, we started out hiking up the road, but luckily we were able to throw our skis on pretty soon after leaving the car. It only took about a half an hour to reach the Grizzly Gulch junction, where we got our first view of Torreys and the Emperor couloir.
Just as I was putting the camera away, the sound of a thousand demons began to grow in the forest behind us. As this sound grew near we turned and saw two people riding a snowmobile up the dirt part of the road at 20+ mph, blankly staring at us with their headlamps. Maybe they were confused as to what we were doing? No way to know. After they had passed we were treated by the lovely smell of half burned diesel. Nothing like a nice tour in the wilderness to make you forget the city.
After about an hour and two short creek crossings we arrived at the base of the couloir.
From the base of the talus mound/couloir we were able to tour up the hard freeze/thaw snow to around 11,400 feet. Here we threw the skis on our packs and got the crampons and axes out and began the climb in earnest.
Luckily there was a solid boot pack we could followed, the booter they put in was pretty efficient and allowed us to move relatively quickly up the left side of the couloir.
After about an hour and forty-five minutes of moving we had reached 13,200 feet and the boot track appeared to veer off to below the east side of the summit. Seeing this I felt it best if we left the boot pack and cross over a rib into a gully just to the west of the line we had been climbing.
Once over the rip it was un-tracked, so I got to kick steps for a change. Since I was leading up fresh snow for the first time, we stayed as close to the still shadowed cold snow as we could. At this point, my legs started to let me know we'd climbed 3,500 feet and I found myself checking the altimeter on my watched ever few minutes. Pro-tip: Staring at your watch very thirty seconds is always a good way to keep your mind off the fatigue.
En route, we found a fun, steep, (50-55+? degrees) gully that deposited us out onto the ridge that cuts between the Emperor and Tuning Fork couloirs. I can't speak for Terrence, but seeing the summit from this vintage point and the few hundred feet more to the summit, did not improve my spirits.
Once on the ridge, we found ourselves a few hundred feet to the west of the previous boot pack, which it turns out actually went directly to the summit. Realizing my stupidity, Terrence directly that we should get back on it, and again we used the rather good boot-pack to continue to labor our way up to the summit. To give you an idea the penalty we paid in breaking trail, it had taken an hour and 24 minutes to cover the final one thousand feet whereas the first two thousand feet of the couloir, using the boot pack, had taken no more than an hour and forty minutes.
Once on the summit we took some pictures, texted the families, ate some flavorless cliff products and were moving in after about twenty-five minutes.
The face below the summit was still relatively hard from the wind and the clouds, that were starting to blow in, but it was relatively straight forward to the top of the couloir.
Once there, we realized that there was not a great way to get through the bottom of the constriction, that leads into the main couloir, so we decided to traverse over and cut through about a fifty feet of the Tuning Fork couloir in order to drop into the skiers left entrance. I am not sure how to classify it, it's either Bill's primary entrance or the variation entrance from Miller and Conner's book, either way, its skiers left of the two.
Once we dropped in, the snow was amazing; it was a mix of soft wind deposited snow up top that transitioned to perfect spring corn as we descended through 13,000 feet.
By the time we had skied to the entrance, of the couloir, my legs were so gassed I just fell over a couple times in lieu of making a turn, which led to a funny back-flip back onto my skis.
We made it back to the road, in what I call quick, 35 minutes after leaving the summit and began polling and skiing our way back to the car.
Except for a few uphill sections, and two of the creek crossings, we were able to ski all but maybe a third of mile back to the car.
What a day... I can't imagine better weather, conditions or ski partner.
Thanks for reading, go get it while the getting's good.
My GPS Tracks on Google Maps (made from a .GPX file upload):
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