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My friend Scott and I have been wanting to find something to climb and ski for a bit.
Scott is leaving our employer for greener pastures and had this week off between jobs so we decided to try something we could do without a high camp.
We spent Wednesday night in my truck camper about on 4 mile creek road, I have a 3/4 ton pickup and with chains we made it to about 11,000' about 1.5 miles from Leavick TH.
We got up had breakfast and were on the trail by 6:15 (never quite as early as I plan)
The road up to Leavick mine was snow covered and good skinning
From there up to the gate and the first mine buildings the snow was thin, we were able to keep our skis, but skiing down would have been pretty bumpy.
After the hilltop mine we climbed the snow and a lower angled rib up to the top of the bowl at about 13,200'. Going up from here was mixed snow and rock so we dropped our skis and made it to the summit by 11:25 We dug out a small confortable seat on the east facing slope to enjoy a snack and some sun out of the wind
After wandering north to the true summit and taking a few minutes to enjoy the views of Massive, Elbert, LaPlatta and the rest of the Sawatch to the west. Then Pikes Peak to the east the wind was picking up and the wind chill getting a bit nippy.
We headed back down Sherman's Ridge to the south, this is fine ridge for a winter climb with enough exposure in the snow to be fun.
Video of our descent down the ridge (Scott's more expensive helmet camera showing off)
(url)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQhML763g18&list=UUPTImeKRGRD-ovXfU7XcOvQ&index=1&feature=plcp(url)
We got back to our skis and were able to find about 1500 VF of skiing on lower angled slopes down to the hilltop mine then down a drainage to the north of the mine and the road.
Youtube video of the skiing not bad for a boney snow year!
(url)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ulpk6W3fWU(url)
We saw 2 fairly recent slide paths one on a NE facing small hill ran about 70' across and 30' downslope. 100 feet to the north of the road at about 12,000'. The other on the the NE aspect of Sheridan was larger an ran for probably 200 vertical feet. The snow we encountered in the bowl was firm and kick steps were good. We did not see/hear any signs of other instability, but we chose our route up and lines down carefully on ribs and lower angeled slopes. and had a very good day. Be careful!
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We saw 2 fairly recent slide paths one on a NE facing small hill ran about 70' across and 30' downslope. 100 feet to the north of the road at about 12,000'. The other on the the NE aspect of Sheridan was larger an ran for probably 200 vertical feet. The snow we encountered in the bowl was firm and kick steps were good. We did not see/hear any signs of other instability, but we chose our route up and lines down carefully on ribs and lower angeled slopes. and had a very good day. Be careful!