I started this post sometime this fall and never had time to finish it. We have some snow now, and the resorts open this week around Aspen so i figure it is a good “get stoked” post.

The Crystal River with leaves a changing.

The high country around Colorado has snow again. The leaves have changed, are beginning to fall again, and if you are up before the sun, you may be scraping your windshield in the mornings again. All of these things get the senses tingling. Its time to start thinking about skiing again. It’s Colorado, and we will probably get another Indian Summer soon enough, and be back out on the rock climbing, but for now…My mind is turning towards the thoughts of winter.

Snow on top of Independence Pass.

So on that note, I thought I would share some of the stories from our trip to the Tordrillo mountains last year.

Kids in a Candy Store.

Bibs on, ski boots over our shoulders, bags packed, food packed all we need is the weather to cooperate. Like many trips to Alaska, the weather can be the biggest obstacle. Packed into the plane, flying west towards the Tordrillo Mountains we are about half way to our destination on the Hayes Glacier. Brad Unglert, Matt Layne, and I are in the loaded down Beaver, while Anton took the little super cub a bit ahead to decide exactly where we want to be. Call comes in over the radio that the fog and clouds were to thick and they can’t land.

This plane is from the 1940's and its going to drop us on a glacier hundreds of miles from anyone. Pretty cool.

Back to the airport, back to the hotel, and the bar. Next day… no Good… Second day..Morning is bad… Afternoon is good, and we are off. This waiting game sucks. This time its a clear day and we make it in just fine. Anton an hour ahead of us to do recon.

Jake makes bush flying look easy.

The flight in is always half the fun.

Too much to choose from.

Mounit Gerdine 11,258 feet.

Coming in hot, that spec down there is Anton freezing in the shade of cold time.

Yes Please.

Blue, Black, and White, thats what we will get to see for the next 22 days.

When we land on the glacier our Camp site is in the shade. We scramble for the warmest clothes we have. This will become our daily routine. Hot Time and Cold Time.

Hot Time

Cold Time

Home Sweet home.

View from the Kitchen

Camp is built and its time to go adventuring. The benefit to skiing North Facing Terrain is that it doesn’t really matter when we leave camp, the snow is always going to be fresh and soft. Today we leave at the crack of 4 pm.

Flat walking means roped up walking. The glacier goes on forever.

Anton found some snow that didn't suck. Our first run of the trip is short, but oh so sweet.

All skiing like this does on your first day is get us motivated to get after it.

Mini golf by Alaskan Standards.

Back in camp it is cold time. We have the grill out cooking up double bacon Cheesburgers and dreaming about the next day. Just a taste and we want more and more. We fall asleep dreaming of goals for tomorrow.

Previews of tomorrow. Makes it hard to sleep.

The next day we wake to more perfect weather and opt to do a long skin around the back side of the large face we have been looking at to find out just what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into today. The answer is a lot of skinning, and some pretty incredible skiing.

Some moon action looking across from the top of a couloir above camp.

Matt lays a turn over in the shadowy Couloir.

Early on in the trip it was actually dark for long enough to call it night time. The moon went mostly sideways across the sky though.

Might as well be a Black Diamond ad.

We enjoyed a couple more days of climbing and skiing perfect creamy powder on nice and steep spines before mother nature let us in for a treat.

Matt and Brad skinning mellow terrain to reach the good stuff.

Anton dropping into spine land.

Brad wanted to jump off of everything he could find. Photo Anton

I was certainly enjoying myself. Photo Anton

A lot! Photo Brad.

That afternoon we had some snow flurries that got us pretty excited that we might get a nice fresh covering on things.

We watched the moon set one more time through the passing clouds and slow snow showers.

And then…

It snowed... a lot.

It snowed and snowed and snowed. We were shoveling off the tents every hour or so for 6 days straight. Walls that started at about knee high around our tents ended up being 8 feet high. I have never shoveled so much in my life. We want 10 inches, we got 10 feet, more than the snowfall for the entire year for most of Colorado.

All our efforts shown during a 10 hour clearing in the weather.

We shoveled, played cards, ate, ate some more, and drank whiskey just waiting for it to clear enough to go skiing.

A block of egg beaters for breakfast. Tasty.

Stop teasing us mother nature.

Brief interludes of sun were time for drying stuff.

Anton calling in a forecast. Praying for mercy, and I think we may have finally had it... for a day.

It did stop snowing for about 12 hours and we went out to poke around just a bit. We found that the couloirs that had been wind protected were fairly stable, but sloughy, and the more exposed faces were rather touchy. One run was enough for the day.

Mother nature decided to let us have it for a few more days as we begged forgiveness for whatever had prompted her wrath. Our PBR stash is running low, something better happen quick!

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Part 2 coming soon…