Elks and Beyond -- Jordan White's Traveling, Skiing and Outdoor Adventures

Traveling, Ski Mountaineering and Climbing in Colorado and…

San Luis Peak

Mountains: San Luis Peak
Dates: May 28, 2007
Crew: gb, Mountainbikerskierchick, jcwhite
Routes climbed: South Ridge from West Willow creek
Routes skied: Yawner gullies

After a couple big days the sleep factor is wearing on us, but we‘ve finally gotten to the last day and its another big one. We found ourselves walking up the wet road around 6:15 from 11,090 ft. We walked the 2 or so miles up valley before we took a right around 11,500 and headed up to our first objective, a saddle around 12,300 ft.
This is me in front of the gullies we would use for a skiing return route.
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After reaching our first saddle we were greeted with a view of our route, and a view of the peak.
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At this point we put our skis on and did a skiing traverse down to where we needed to climb to our next saddle. We covered what was probably over 1/2 a mile in a short matter of minutes to where we started climbing again. We climbed to the second saddle and then clicked back into our skis and covered another 1/2 mile over to the base of our final climb up to the peak. We put our skins on here and were able to skin all the way to the summit.
Even if it got desperate at times:

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Here is frank almost to the top
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I summited around 11:45 and Frank about 5 min later. Around noon Mbsc showed up and after looking at some dark clouds headed our way we clicked in and it was time to ski.
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We skied down the yawner gullies to within about 200 feet of the bottom and at that point we had to start climbing again.

Frank:
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Brittany:
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Myself:
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At this point we had 1100 ft to go up to our saddle to go down to our cars. This was going to involve a lot of bushwacking…at least the way we chose to go.
About to head through some willows
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We saw a moose and her Calf.
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Frank at the saddle
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This shows our return route:
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Sunset on the way home:
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All told it was an 11 hour day. All of us are happy to be done with San Luis as a ski descent. Great weekend with 4 peaks…good feeling of accomplishment.

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