Jan 2011 - Joel & Friends

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First, watch this video.  I promise it will be worth your time.  It is far and away the best I've ever been a part of.  HUGE thanks to Mike Bibeau for helping with it!




This month my biggest motivation was to get deeper into the backcountry and farther away from crowds.  Sometimes though, my usual spots were so darn good that they were hard to pass up!  However, I did have many adventures into new and deeper areas.  The skiing and mountain adventures from this month can be broken down most easily into 4 different sections:

1. "Standard" Pow Skiing
2. The Green Wilson Hut
3. Twin Peak
4. The Eisman Hut

Perhaps it is a bit ironic, but in my attempt to avoid people by pushing further up and further into the mountains, I became significantly closer to the people I shared those experiences with.

"Standard" Pow Skiing:
I put "Standard" in quotes because it was skiing in some of my usual haunts.  The skiing was anything but standard.  It was fantastic and the early and middle parts of January saw huge snow totals falling.


Photo by Joel Gratz




Photo by Joel Gratz


Photo by Joel Gratz


The Green Wilson Hut (Jan 22-24)
This trip was certainly the highlight of the month.  I booked this hut in June, 2010 with hopes to ski some of the alpine peaks in the area.  Kelly, Doug, Palmer, Mike B, Mike S, and Cory came along for the adventure.  When we ventured into the alpine, we saw several natural avalanches, so we decided to spend our time in the trees where we had a seemingly endless supply of deep pillow lines.  It was incredible.  It was Kelly's first hut trip and she absolutely loved it...who wouldn't?!


Photo by Mike Bibeau


Photo by Mike Bibeau


Photo by Mike Bibeau


Photo by Mike Bibeau


Photo by Mike Bibeau



















Twin Peak (Jan 29-30)
With my itch to ski an alpine line denied on two hut trips in the middle of the month, the end of the month seemed to provide the best weather and stability to get into the alpine.  Clayton Charles Roehner and I spent the night in his suburban before a big day on Twin Peak.  We originally intended on hiking the ~4000' vertical feet and skiing from the summit.  We started before dawn and embarked on a 7.5 hour bushwhack from hell.  When we finally gained the summit ridge we experienced the largest WHUMPH that either of us had ever heard/felt (bad avalanche sign).  Unfortunately it was on the same aspect as the summit descent.  Instead, we traversed through some scree and upclimbed a bit to get to another more stable descent.  It was a fantastic consolation prize.  We named it "The Never Ending Couloir" since it provided 3500' vertical.  It was steep in parts, but not incredibly steep.  The snow at the top was terrible, but got MUCH better as we descended further out of the wind effects.  All in all I finally got to do a mid-season, big mountain descent for January.


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


Photo by Clayton Charles Roehner


The Eisman Hut (Jan 11-13)
Although we had a great time, the weather and avalanche conditions really hindered our original plans at the Eisman Hut.  We ended up skiing short tree lines that were within a mile or two of the hut for our time there and had a blast playing games and hanging out with each other in the evenings.



















The End