Colchuck Peak; May 10, 2008

Panorama from Colchuck lake. Aasgard pass : Dragontail Peak (8840') : Colchuck glacier : Colchuck Peak (8705'). (Editor's note: wow, colchuck looks dwarfed compared to dragontail at this angle.)
Lucas and I had some celebrating to do. After long weeks for both of us, we had a few highlights. I finished teaching my first class (Admittedly it was team taught with my boss but she gave me flexibility in organization and doing most of the teaching; we'll have to wait to see what the students thought) and Lucas had his last few lab meeting before he moves on to bigger (and better?) things. For weather concerns, we picked something pretty far east and agreed on Colchuck Peak. It's a pretty massive mountain and I've always been intrigued by Mark's "3000' glissade" stories. What better than doing the 3000' on skis. The plan was to make camp Fri afternoon, ski Saturday (Colchuck and others things?), maybe get a run in on Sunday, Ski out to the car Sun late morning, weather permitting of course. After my last class on Friday AM, I came home and packed everything into the car. After his lab meeting Lucas packed his crap as fast as possible and we were on our way, although not as early as ideal. Leaving the car at about 7:00 we had to boot up the road (no access because of snow) about 1 mile to the TH and then another mile or two because the snow was only patchy. We finally started skinning and made decent time until it got dark and we lost the skin tracks we were following. We mustered on and soon (i.e. 10:30) were at Colchuck lake for camp.

It was one before we got to sleep so we had a casual morning and headed up the Colchuck glacier. Clouds came and went, but by the time we made it atop the glacier, we were greeted with biting winds and it soon became socked in. We booted to the summit (left photo) and then returned to our skis. We got to ski 2500' from there - strait back to camp on soft and heavy snow, which made for good skiing (Lucas eating it up on the right). With the weather deteriorating, we aborted the plan for additional runs and an extra night at camp. We had a couple celebratory PBRs for the summit, our time out, and our nice run, and then headed out.

The ski/boot out was the worst part. All gear was soaked (i.e. lots of extra weight) and we had full packs. Trying to navigate through the terrain was a lesson in survival skiing. I finally gave up about .75 miles from the TH and put the skis on my back.