Current Conditions: Northern Gore Range, 11.18.07

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The nice thing about a dry and slow start to the season is that most high trailheads are still accessible, making it possible to hit some terrain that is typically reserved for late spring/early summer skiing. There is some great skiing to be had out there, but it comes with a price: Difficult approaches and minimal vert. Good skiing doesn’t come easy this time of year.

On Sunday we set out for the northern Gore with our sites set on skiing the main snowfield off Mount Powell. Some photos from 10 days earlier had indicated the line was “in” from the summit. I’ve been itching to ski Powell for a few years now as it is the highest peak in the Gore and offers some nice and long ski lines from the summit. Andy and I met up with Mark in Vail and then headed up the dirt road to the Piney Lake ranch. The road was in surprisingly good condition for this time of year. There were the occasional snow patches, but hunting season traffic had packed down the snow nicely making for a smooth and effortless drive up the 12 mile stretch of road.

We made our way up the long Piney River valley and to where the trail splits between Upper Piney and the Kneeknocker pass trail. We hit snowline right around this point and the going became a little more difficult. The summer trail was just hidden by the foot or so of snow on the ground so we found ourselves bushwhacking most of the way to timberline.

The climb up Kneeknocker pass was tedious and laborous as there wasn’t enough snow to cover the loose and steep talus field leading to the top of the pass. Instead, we were dealt with the duty of scrambling up a slick and unstable slope of loose rock and grass.

Once we reached the top of the pass we got our first glimpse of the Powell snowfield and things didn’t look too good. The top portion was in good shape, but the bottom half was pretty much melted out. Bummer. I guess Powell will have to wait yet another outing. Instead, we scoped a couple of nicely filled chutes coming off of Peak C prime and Kneeknocker pass. The snow in the chutes was actually really good. Bottomless powder and no significant signs of instability made for some excellent turns down into the Black Creek drainage. We managed to tack on around 1,700′ of vertical on this outing, which isn’t all that bad for the season we’ve had so far.

Andy:

Mark:

Andy:

The trek out was a pain as we had to climb a good 1,600′ out of the Black Creek drainage up and over the east side of Kneeknocker pass and then another 5 miles back to the truck at PineyLake.

Sunset and alpenglow on The Spider:

Needless to say we were exhausted when we arrived back at the ranch under a cold and starlit night. We managed to score some fun turns though, which made every ounce of effort worth it.

A storm rolled through the region last night bringing anywhere from 6″-10″ to the northern mountains. The big winner was Buffalo Pass with 12″ of new snow overnight. Looks like another storm is scheduled to roll through on Friday, but at this time is not looking very promising. We’ll see!