Mt. Bierstadt Ski Descent
I managed to finagle a half day at work on Friday for the purpose of hitting up an afternoon Bierstadt ski with Sam and Carl. I was eager to get back at this one after carrying skis to 13,900‘ in March and being aced by too little snow cover. I left at 11:00am and met Carl at the T-Rex lot 25 minutes after a short stop at Good Times for a Bleu Cheese Bacon Burger duo (5 bucks for 2 right now). Carl and I hightailed it up to Guanella Pass where we were hoping to beat the work crews on their afternoon construction closure, turns out we had to wait for 30 minutes but it was time well spent on gearing up. Sam met us at the upper closure and we were skinning up the road at 1:30pm. Continue reading…
We were all up for some more descents this past weekend despite the deteriorating weather forecast. For awhile Carl, Caroline, and I had talked about a two night camping trip to Elkhead Basin to ski Belford, Oxford, and Missouri. As fortune had it, we all left with less than we wanted to leave with, but some good ski mountaineering was had nonetheless. Caroline, Carl, and I met up in Golden after work on Friday and headed for Leadville. The plan was to meet Sam at Vicksburg and backpack into lower Elkhead Basin as a group of four. The plan went off without a hitch, we were pitching a camp near the old broken cabin just below treeline after a few hours of tough skinning. We flattened out some tent platforms with skis and shovels and found ourselves warm inside sleeping bags by 11:30pm. 