Skiing Mount Massive

I haven't posted in a while because we have been training for an adventure race this July. Not a lot of extra energy available to carry a camera and take pictures when you are huffing and puffing in running shoes or on a mountain bike. Sean and I decided to do a little "cross training" though so we packed our ski gear and ditched work this Wednesday to climb and ski Mt Massive outside Leadville, CO. I left my house at 0200 to meet Sean in Lone Tree at 0300. Why is it that I can roll right out of bed at 0130 to climb a mountain but when my alarm goes off at 0530 for work I have to hit the snooze bar five times before dragging my ass out of bed?? We kept to our schedule and turned off the pavement just as it was starting to get light out. I wish I had a picture of the nice gentlemen working the gas station in Idaho Springs where we stopped to get extra food. I think his name was Billy - Billy was a man of few words, had an extremely large belt buckle and a sweet handle bar mustache. He handed me an empty plastic bag to pack my purchased food in - best suited to work night shift!

Sean's new jeep at the 10.500ft trailhead

It was 27F at 0600 at the trailhead.

Sean starting up the avalanche path

We have skied a portion of this route before and this area had slid that year too. In the top left you can see light just hitting the top of our route for the day.

This crotch shot self portrait is meant to give an idea of how steep this climb is...STEEP



Another shot of the slope with the Elk Mtns in the distance


It was a little scary to limit my all fours contact with the snow to take my camera out and snap some pictures. A fall on this slope would be ill advised.

Sean tackling the steepest part of the climb

Now is as good a time as any to mention we did not make it to the summit. We made it to a false summit just over 14,000ft - from this point we could see the only remotely reasonable way to finish the climb was to drop our ski gear and traverse then climb a steep snowfield with a lot of vertical exposure. No problem, grab the crampons and ice ax and lets do it. Except Sean's crampons were broken living in a landfill somewhere and I left my ice ax in the jeep because Sean didn't bring his. Feeling like a couple of unprepared rookies we accepted our fate to not summit (again) and began discussing the ski descent. It didnt take very long to come to the agreement that neither of us were a good enough skier to ski down the steepest pitch at the top. It was probably close to a 45-50 degree slope and still pretty crusty from the overnight freeze (not to mention littered with boulders inviting a fall). I have a personal problem though...down climbing is not my strong suit. I was trying to decide if I wanted to cartwheel to the bottom on skis or crampons...neither option seemed appealing. Sean found a good down climb along the ridge though and we were able to clip into our skis on steep but more open and forgiving terrain. 


I made this pic bigger so you can see my sweet turns on the left, among my last for the season

Sean with an impressive backdrop across the valley

Me skiing the second to last pitch, just above the avie path

The necessary evil of the walk out if you want to ski 3,000 vertical feet in June

Getting there: From Leadville, CO head south approximately 3mi on US 24. Turn right on CO 300, continue about 3/4 of a mile and turn left at the Halfmoon Campground sign. To make it all the way to the trailhead at 10,500ft a high clearance vehicle with some low end torque is required so depending on vehicle its about 7-8mi from the right turn. There is a clearing on the right side of the dirt road to park in - trailhead sign and register is just ahead through the trees.

Route: This explains the route we took - not necessarily the preferred or easiest approach. We hiked approximately two miles with our ski gear on our packs. Be prepared to posthole through some snow drifts while still in the trees. You will come to a point where the trail breaks out of the trees onto an avalanche path - hang a right and start up the path and around the right of the waterfall. Pick your best point below the false summit block to head left over the ridgeline - continue up this ridgeline until you can see the high alpine bowl to your left. You can climb straight up this like we did (steep climb, crampons/ice ax highly encouraged) or you pick your way up to the next ridgeline and head left again. Either way will bring you to a false summit where we stopped our ascent. If you want to reach the true summit let me know how your snow or rock climb goes - its doable with the right gear. For the descent we pretty much backtracked on our ascent. Except for a couple 1-2 minute walks to cross over to the next band of snow we were able to ski all the way to the bottom of the avalanche path where the trail goes back into the trees.

Precautions: This late in the season its important to get an early start. I didn't wake up at 0130 for nothing. You need to get off the snow before it gets too warm. These slopes are steep and there is obvious wet slab activity. Unlike us, bring the right gear for an aggressive snow climb.