Mountains: Handies
Dates: May 27, 2007
Crew: Frank, Jordan, Brittany
Routes climbed: American Basin summer route
Routes skied: NE face down Grizzly gulch

After an afternoon of sitting around (I was sick for most of it) we went to bed early and the following morning the alarm came at 4 am again. Two of Frank and Brittany’s friends had showed up the day before and headed up with us to the American Basin TH while we left one car down at the TH. We were a little slower getting ready today but we were on the snow skinning by 5:55 am.

Jon and Kieth opted for another route up the face instead of our skinning route.

After watching them climb up the face we continued on around the backside on skins and skinned up and out of the bowl onto a ridgeline where the sun finally hit us.

Though this isnt a long climb by any means, I think all of us have started to feel good in the mountains and at altitude. Gb was on top in 2 hrs, with me following 15 min later and Mbsc another 15 min later. I came over the ridge to gb yelling at me to get up there “we gotta ski, man we gotta ski.” Alright well I but it in gear and got up there and saw what he was talking about. The face was getting baked, and it was in prime condition for some corn. As soon as Mbsc got there we put a rush on getting ready to ski and dropped in soon.

Frank:

Myself:

Brittany:

We skied down to the top of our couly where Brittany dropped first and reported that it was still slightly icy. Well I went after her and found the same stuff to be breakable crust….son of a….Worst stuff ever. Luckily it didnt last too long and we found some softer snow.

Myself:

Frank Decided on a different route:

Below the colouir we found some of our best corn ever.

Lines:

We skied down to 11,100 and only had to walk down a little over 600 ft to get to camp. The whole trip took around 4 hrs and was a great second day to a big weekend

We stayed at my family’s cabin in Lake City and had some extra visitors