At almost an identical time of year 2 years ago I skied this Peak with the master himself…Lou Dawson.  Here is his take on that weekend.

4/27/09

This time around the plan was to meet Joe Brannan and Caleb Wray down at the Silver Pick trailhead to give a go at some or all of the Wilson’s.  We drove down from the Crestone group on Sunday afternoon and set up a car camp at the snowbank blocking the road around 9500 ft.  It was still light so we figured a recon mission was in order.  We unloaded the sled and I got back into the ski clothes.  The first 1/2 mile or so consisted of a couple snowbanks with some very long dry sections.  I rode up to where the road goes in to the woods for good and all the way to the trailhead.  After manhandling the sled to turn it around and back down, I rode back out to the first long dry patch and ditched the sled here for the night.  It was only about a 10 minute hike back to the trucks from here.

I got back and we cooked food, ate, cooked more food, ate, and finally got ready to go to sleep about the time it got dark.

I opted to sleep on the trailer in my bivy sack.  I fell asleep staring at the seemingly endless array of stars above me.  Around midnight I was awakened by a constant fall of snow on my face.  I rolled over and covered my face for another hour or so of sleep.  Around 1:15 I woke up to the snow again that seemed to be coming and going, as were the stars.  Alright…enough.  I got up standing in my untied boots and shorts.  I walked over and started up the truck, found my jetboil, cooked up a very culinary like breakfast consisting of…instant rice, that’s about it.  I slowly readied myself and around 2AM I walked over to make sure Caleb and Joe hadn’t missed their alarms.  Caleb hadn’t and Joe seemed to at least be moving.

We walked away from the trucks at 2:45 and up to the sled a bit later.  After crawling up the broken snow with skiers in tow we found ourselves parked around 10,600 with 2,400 feet to go to rock of ages saddle.  We found ourselves lounging on top of the saddle a little after 6 am, and by lounging I mean, I spent 20 minutes cleaning frozen mud out of my dynafit fittings in the back of the boot so that I could click in for the dropping traverse to the base of El Diente’s North Face.

At this point Caleb had not seemed like his ol’ self on the way up and announced that he was done and headed back.  He had been fighting a cold and it was kicking his ass this morning.  At this point Joe and I didn’t really count our chances all that high for getting more than 2 peaks.  We stripped the skins and did a dropping traverse around the entire cirque that forms the top of Navajo basin.  It might have saved our legs about 200 vertical of booting, but it certainly wasn’t easy on the arms with all the polling.

We started the boot. It was long. It was really long. Like 2,000 feet long. We traded leads fairly often and finally found ourselves at the edge of the traverse that Dav and his crew used.

At this point I remembered from my last trip that the easiest way to gain the ridge is to start the traverse for about 20 feet to where a gully leads up to the ridge. From here it was just some ridge scrambling to get to the summit. I guess that’s a slight understatement, as the scrambling on this ridge is nothing short of treacherous with skis on your back.

We found ourselves on the false summit, a 2 minute walk put us on the real summit.

A sip of water and some quick food and we were getting ready to ski. Joe had his eye on the south couloir (aka mahogany couloir). I was fairly impartial other than the fact that the north couloir held powder! Oh well, I’d already skied that one, so I suppose the south one would be a new adventure.

We had to drop in to the north side and then traverse/sidestep back to the top of the couloir to get in to the south side with skis on.

A few hundred feet down we encountered our first of two obstacles in the couloir; the first of two ice bulges. Skis off, crampons on, downclimbing begins. Downclimbing rock and snow is one thing. Ice is quite another. I led the way down and on to the next icebulge with careful pick and crampon point placement, this was one of the more intense moments during the day.

Finally out, we put the skis back on. We ripped some turns down the apron and hung a hard left and did a dropping traverse in to upper Kilpacker basin. We came to spot on a bench around 13,000 feet and put the skins back on. From here we headed off to Mount Wilson.

We came to spot on a bench around 13,000 feet and put the skins back on. From here we headed off to Mount Wilson.