Jones Pass - Butler Gulch

Location: Jones Pass Cirque
Riders: JP, iskibc, Kya, RJ
Start: 6am - 4pm (at car)

The anticipation started early monday as I was sitting in my office watching the storm dump over most of colorado. Loveland Pass reported almost a foot and a half and some spots in the northern central rockies got more then two and half feet. I knew the following day tour would be epic, if not brutal.

Jones Pass - Oct. Storm [Video Clip/Sound.wmv]
I met up with some backcountry skier friends from TGR in empire at 6am. The previous day we decided on doing a Jones Pass - Butler Gulch super tour. We rolled out of empire on the way to henderson mine, we decide to push it and see how far we could four wheel the trucks up the Jones Pass road in 20″ deep snow. We made it almost to tree line before getting RJ’s 4runner stuck in a ditch off the side of the pass road.

GPS Route & Waypoints

Lucky Kya had a tow rope and we latched it up to the Landcruiser and yanked him out. At that point we decided to park and start the slog. Afer a qiuck beacon check, the day started partly cloudy and we were stoked to see blue skies, that quickly changed after the first few switch backs above treeline. It was still dumping snow and windy as hell, vertigo had set in a while ago and visibility was non existent. The vertigo was really bad and we had no barring on landmarks or anything for that matter. After postholeling up to my waist for the last hour i was white knuckkling the GPS and topo maps. We hit the ridge and jone pass summit at 12,500′ and had to wait for a weather window before we could drop the first run. Finally we could see down to the flats below and we took off. Short run, great powder, but just a warm up for what was in store. Traversing the flats toward the southern ridge on jones pass basin we boot packed straight up this gnarly couloir filled with snow.

It was a brutal climb and very slow after the 3 mile slog. We reached the small cornice at the top and made our way along the ridge to a spot we saw earlier from the slog in. The weather broke as we were planning the descent, Kya dropped first and we all had smiles watching him rip lines through endless blower pow. Run 2 was so good we forced ourselves to boot pack back up the avalanche chute we just hit for another lap. The snow was great, lots of coverage and face shots if you wanted them.

Overall the snow was a bit on the wet side but plenty slashable. We admired our fresh cut lines on the slog out and ended up tracking almost 3,500ft of powder turns and a little over 6 mile slog in deep colorado powder.

GPS Route Elevation Profile

 

Some Highlights:
* watching RJ explode off a rock jump, core shot
* watching Kya and iskibc rip killer pow lines and turns
* getting pissed at iskibc for telling me i wouldn’t need my snowshoes
* freezing our ass off at the jones pass summit in white out conditions
* finding my handwarmers stashed in my bc pack. (thanks mom!)
* dropping off a small rock into untracked powder chute in october
* ripping face shots having half blower/half wet pow stuck on your goggles
* the slog out wondering if we’ll make it back to the cars before dark
* the miller highlife and coolranch dorritos waiting at the cars

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Most of these trips I was solo or with the dog, so no fun shred pics. You get the idea though. Plenty left if you work for it. This is what i did all summer, same as last summer. same as next summer. Summer aint all bad

Enjoy the pics from some of the adventures and even a little fly fishing WY
style.

Loveland Pass - Late June

Loveland Resort Terrain Park - Late June

Rocky Mountain National Park

Rollins Pass

Fly Fishing in WY - Miracle Mile

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La Plata Peak, UnNamed Couloir
Distance: 10 miles round trip (2 mile bushwhack)
Vert Gain: 4400′
Vert Ski’d: 1600′
Duration: 9 hr to car, 5:00am start
Date: 07/16/2005
Elevation: 14,450
Starting Location: Lake Creek Trailhead

La Plata Route

Shreddin

Yup thats my Forum park board

Mini-Couloir

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Apache Mountain, Apache Couloir
Distance: 13 miles round trip
Vert Gain: 3500′
Vert Ski’d: 2000′
Duration: 10 hr to car, 4:00am start
Date: 07/09/2005
Elevation: 13,500
Starting Location: Brainard Lake

Alright, I promised a write up so I’m going to try and summarize a few of the summer highlights. Starting with June, what a great year. shit, We had a dump of 10″ up on Loveland Pass june 5th. We couldn’t believe it, spent a few days up on the pass gettin the last of that. That was the end of the freshies, but not the fun. The next weekend I met up with my friend drrtyD and her boy adam from Loveland resort. Home boy has the keys so we took the sleds up to the old terrain park and rebuild one of the kickers. Great day, pin pin Mark and Adam were killing it and I was trying to take pics. After a nice sunburn, I took a week off. Mid June I did a few solo trips back to rollins pass and skyscaper glacier. The approach from the east depends on the snow conditions on the road, I made it about 1.5 mile below yankee doodle lake and parked the cruiser. I had my rottie bones with me so we headed up the pass road toward the rock cut and needle eye tunnel. Snow wasn’t bad, got some good turns in and just enjoyed the outdoors. The next day I decided to head over to rocky mountain national park and see what I could find off trail ridge road. I got up near upper hidden valley around 7:30 and started hiking up. Did a few laps and met up with some locals, I did some car pool laps with them then ended up hitch hiking for a few more hours. Great spot, lots of turns. Later that day I went further up trail ridge and summitted sundance mountain.. a few turns back down after lunch at the summit. A few days later I took a trip up to st. marys glacier, still plenty of snow and there are a few jibs going on. July was kinda mellow, I only got out a few times to apache couloir and la plata. Lots of hiking and great camping. The shred was awesome as the snow was super slush and we had a lot of fun jumping the runnels and hitting the “mini” couloirs all around. I haven’t really gotten anything done in august, been traveling for work. Planning on heading up to st. marys soon or getting back up near isabelle glacier. Also planning on hitting up taylor and andrews glacier in RNMP sometime in september. Season is almost here!

Apache Mountain/Navajo Peak - Route

The Slog In

Climbing Apache Couloir

48 Degrees

Fresh trout we caught on the hike out

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