South Gully Ski.

Solo

4/26/09

I wasn’t about to leave the south colony area without skiing Humbolt.  It was the last peak I had left in the range, and everytime I have been here to give it a go, it has not really been in great condition.  Well that changed with the 5 feet of snow this area recieved in the month of April.  Humbolt was caked.

Photo: Joe from the day before

I road the sled to the high point from the day before and booted then skinned up the familiar gully through to treeline.  Taking a right at treeline and making an ascending traverse towards the summer routes intersection with the ridge, i found myself at the bottom of a promising couloir.  I swapped skins for crampons and began the boot up the frozen spring snow.

The couloir offered easy booting until it emptied itself into an open talus field of post holing misery.  I made a point to catch the ridge line as soon as possible.

As soon as I did I took off my crampons and bounced up the summer route to the summit, arriving just 4 hours after leaving the truck. A glance back at the crestones along the way:

Broken Hand:

Self summit shot:  It was still windy.

The snow had ALOT of snow on it for a Sangre Peak:

I skied turns in and out of talus to make it over to my descent gully where I found it to be just starting to corn up, and ready for the kiss of my skis.

I think I only stopped twice on the way back to the snowmobile:

I hopped on the sled and found myself back at the truck in just 4.5 hours since I started up the sled that morning.  Joe had gone off to drive around the Sangres and scope out other possible lines.  We decided to meet in Poncha Springs for lunch.  Joe!  Why is it always Mexican Food?  We were headed to the Telluride area, but on the way I noticed that if you need or want to ski Shavano, It’s in good right now: