Peaks: Blanca and Ellingwood
Routes: South Face of Ellingwood, NW face of Blanca
Crew: Frank, Jordan

The approach

I met Frank at the bottom of the Lake Como Road at around 7:30 pm on wed night. After organizing gear and packing up my car we headed up the road. We climbed up to the 10000 foot mark, still not having crossed much in the way of snow, we continued. We kept driving and ended up finally stopping somewhere around 10,400.

It was dark when we started walking, but we headed up the road carrying our heavy packs full of sleeping bags, ski gear and food for the next couple days. In about 1.5 hours we reached the cabin and the lake and after getting ready for the following day, we were asleep around midnight. Around 3 am that oh so painful sound of the alarm going off came, and we were were hiking by 4:05 AM.

The climb

We opted for Ellingwood first as it recieves the earlier sun hit. We skinned straight across the lake and on up above treeline. We continued skinning in the dark up to the upper basin between Blanca and Ellingwood. At this point we ditched our skins and at the same time began to see the first light on Ellingwood.

We snapped on the crampons and headed up the face heading for a low point in the ridge near the summit. The snow was nicely set up and made for absolute effortless cramponing up to the summit ridge.

After reaching the ridge and taking a look down this scary looking chute we reached the summit around 6:45 am.

After sitting around for a while taking in the views and realizing we had plenty of time to climb Blanca today we finally dropped in around 7:30 AM.

Frank:

Myself:

In the end this is the line we skied on Ellingwood:

Time for the climb back up Blanca:

We had skied down to around 13k or so and put our crampons on for the climb up Blanca. The climb went quickly as we kicked steps straight up to a point above the saddle on the Blanca side.

We were on top of our second peak by 9:45 am

Here is a view of the crestones:

And ready to ski around 10:30 or so. We dropped in to ski our second peak of the day.

Frank:

Myself:

Here is our route:

The snow on Ellingwood was noisy to say the least. It was still frozen from the night before, but made for safe skiing. The snow down Blanca was extremely hard skiing with breakable crust most places with a very soft layer underneath that offered little support. As i did a jump turn in one spot the snow below me all gave way and i started to slide over a couple rockbands. We decided it was worth a picture once we got down.

We skied down valley and all the way to Lake Como at the cabin, and spent the day sleeping and eating the insane amounts of food we brought up.
We were both siked for what should be a great day tomorrow on Little Bear.
Great day, I should have Little bear up soon…