Peak: Mount Massive 14,421
Route: Southwest slopes from north halfmoon
Crew: Frank, Joe, Jordan, Jon
Mileage: 6.5 miles
Date: 3/23/08

So the plan for Sunday was the SW slope of Mount Massive. Pardon the lame humor, but this is one MASSIVE mountain. We planned on meeting Frank and John at the snow closure at 6 am. I met Joe at 3:30 at Colorado Mills, and we were off. After getting gas we headed up I-70 realizing we would be there early, and after an uneventful drive we pulled into the snow closure around 5:30 am. The temperature on the truck read -8 deg.

We unloaded the snowmobile and after making sure we were ready to go we leaned back and waited.

Frank from the sounds of it was having a little trouble, and had some setbacks (we all know how much of a pain it is to turn a truck and trailer around). He finally arrived and got ready quickly and I believe we took off around 7:30 AM.

Oh well I guess El Presidente Bush gave us a break with the daylight thing. The snowmobiles were warmed up and we cruised the 8 miles up to the trailhead. We only had a couple of snowmobile issues on the way up, mostly overheating, but we made it up, and started skinning at about 8:20 am.
We skinned up and through the forest for about 700 vertical to 11,200 where we started up the slopes that form the southwest side of massive.

We all noticed constantly that either we had been missing a lot or this is a very good snow year for the sawatch. There were many delicious looking lines to be seen all around.

Somewhere just below treeline, John was not feeling it, and was having trouble, and decided to hightail it home.
Looking up with our basic line headed up:

I had been feeling good up to this point, despite having a cold, but I was starting to bonk, and my lung capacity did not feel like it was what it needed to be. Not to mention I was constantly coughing my lungs out. This is the view I would see for the rest of the climb

Our skin track took us to the vicinity of 14,000 feet, where the skis were strapped on packs and kicking steps started (not that I was there for this original transition). I started following the already blown in bootpack up to the ridgeline. Upon reaching this it is a very disappointing view, realizing you still have several subsummits to go over and around to get where you want to be. After a few choice words with the wind, I continued hacking, and stepping, and repeating again, I could see frank and Joe having crested the summit, but knew I really didn’t want to turn around. I kept moving and finally made it.

Frank and Joe were nice enough to wait for me, even considering the wind was howling and it wasn’t very warm, and after stripping skins and buckling down boots, I clicked in and skied back down the ridgeline towards where they were bunkered up.

We traversed around the east slopes to make it back to the SW slopes that we had climbed

After coming around the corner we had some jumpturns down some narrow snowfields and then out onto the main face.
Frank:

Joe:

Jordan:

Looking back at the picture we painted:

We skied out to the sleds and motored on down the 8 miles to the cars. I think everyone was extremely worn out at this point. After loading up we headed our separate ways.

Great day boyz, thanks for waiting for my sick demoralized self!