Mount Wilson Ski

Continued from El Diente:

I have never climbed Mount Wilson from the Kilpacker side. Joe had though. Here is me wondering whether I will get to make good use of this beer on the top of the Coors Light Face.

We skinned up the basin to about 13,600 or so. Here we found ourselves at the base of the west couloir of Mount Wilson.

I was motivated now! I threw the skis on my back and didn’t even bother putting on the crampons, as the snow was perfect for booting without crampons. I punched steps up the couloir and we found ourselves at the top of the couloir in no time; only about 100 feet below the summit.

After scoping out what Dav and his crew did a couple years ago, there was a general consensus of “the hell with that!”

We climbed up the fin like ridge to the summit, which again required some exposed climbing that was further hampered with the skis on our backs.

Joe says “whoa!”

On the summit we scoped around for other options. There was an option that headed south and then southwest that seemed reasonable. After some more scoping, we agreed that it was the best option.

Back on the summit we broke out the stoves and had some Ramen before putting on the skis.

Time to ski: We skied over 50 vertical down off the summit, and then had to downclimb about 20 feet to snow on the back side.

From here we dropped a couple hundred vertical to the East and traversed back around to boot up the south couloir to just below the north face.

We hiked back up to the highest snow below the face (above where we took our skis off on the back side).

We put the skis on and headed down the North face. A short section of Billy-goating and we were out on the ridge proper skiing a mix of powder, corn, and dust layer crust.