New York Mountain || 11.8.08

It has been a rather slow start to the season here in Colorado. Not only has it been dry and warm, but storms have only been yielding a few inches here and there, not the feet we need to start a good base. Despite the lack of snowfall this season, I’ve still managed to get out for a few decent tours. This time of year is always good preparation for getting your touring legs back into shape as well as your awareness and backcountry travel mindset in tune.

Our starting point for the day:

Click on images to enlarge 

This past weekend I connected with Andy and Colin on a tour up New York Mountain in the Northern Sawatch range. We met early at Colin’s place in Chief Hosa and managed to drive the truck all the way up the 4×4 road to the summer trailhead. A good 12″-15″ of snow blanketed the road making for an interesting and hairy ride up the jeep road. We made it to the trailhead from the town of Eagle in about an hour and quickly got packed up and ready to go for the day. Not expecting we would make it all the way up to the trailhead in the truck, we had planned on this being a long day rather than a quick 2 mile, 1,500′ jaunt up to the summit. Knowing we had a really short climb to the summit we got cocky and started making comments on how we would be lapping the couloirs of New York Mountain this day. Well, karma kicked us in the ass and made our anticipated ’short’ day into a rather long one.

Just reaching treeline:

Colin with Edwards in the background:

Andy further down the ridge:

We blazed up the lower trail and made it to treeline rather quickly and decided to check out the ridgeline to get a glimpse of the couloirs coming off of New York. Our options were to either follow the long ridge up to the summit of New York and then drop our line of choice or ski a line off the ridge down to the base of the couloirs and climb our intended ski route. We chose the latter as we really didn’t get a good view of the face and didn’t have a good sense of the snowpack we would be dealing with once in the couloir. We scrambled up the ridge a little ways and finally settled on a somewhat spicy line down to New York lake.

Colin and Andy scoping out some options off the ridgeline:

Run #1 down off the ridge:

Colin enjoying the pow:

Andy’s turn:

Travel from the lake to the base of the couloir was rather heinous due to the thin snowpack and maze of large boulders and rockfall. After some work and patience we finally made it to the base of the couloir and began booting up the apron. The snow in the couloir was fairly consistent, with the exception of the thin ice layer on top.

Colin taking a look at our options:

Going up:

Thanks to Andy for putting in the bootpack:

Andy:

We climbed a good 1500′ to the top of the chute and made our descent shortly thereafter as the daylight was beginning to fade. The skiing was so-so due to the thin crust layer on top. If it hadn’t been for the crust ski conditions would have been much more favorable. Once we reached the bottom of the line, we put our skins back on and trudged our way west to our exit couloir. Our exit couloir was a minefield of instabilities and downright crappy snow conditions making our ascent rather stressful. It was our only way back up to the ridge without having to contour and take a major detour, so we pushed through and played it super conservatively. We found lots of pockets of collapsing snow, whomphing, and cracking. We played it safe by hugging the rock wall and using more rock to climb up our exit rock than snow. While the snow was thin, it still had potential of destruction due to the large exposed boulders near the bottom. We managed to make it up the exit couloir and onto the ridge by dusk and pushed our way back to the truck shortly thereafter.