The Surface Horde: Graduation: The Warm-Up 13er, Sniktau

From June 4, 2012

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It’s difficult to explain to someone unfamiliar with the climbing mentality why one might choose take on a difficult route completely on their own. Even with the outdoors/action sports community the ‘never go alone’ mantra is bleated endlessly as the first and foremost rule of the backcountry. I’ve read a bazillion debates online about the risks of solo-missions, and they have all been repeated a million and a half times, so I will not.

Mt. Quandary and its North Couloir

Not everyone who goes backcountry skiing is a mountaineer. However, in my opinion, every real mountaineer is an adventurer first, and the only rule of adventure is that there are no rules and no guarantees. There is no partner, no peace of equipment, and no amount of experience that can guarantee your safety.

Security is an illusion! You can do everything correctly, follow every rule, and even be in what you think is a safe place and disaster can still strike. This is not the law of the mountains, but instead is natural law. Human society endlessly strives to erase this obvious fact through our norms, but it only can be temporarily hidden. Reality has a nasty habit of ripping this charade to shreds and sucker-punching the unaware in the face.

Back to my story, my university schoolwork was finished but I still had a week of time to kill before graduation. I had been running and gym-climbing in preparation for a Baker climb, so it seemed like I should head up and spend some time training at high-altitude with skis and pack on my back. So I threw my gear in my CRV and headed out of Denver sunday night to see how many mountains I could climb before exhaustion overtook me.

My initial plan was to ski a 13er, a 14er, and then climb another 13er in three different Colorado ranges in three consecutive days. I ended up deciding to save the last climb for a different day due to symptoms of altitude sickness.

I spend Sunday night in my bivy sack camped outside of my car on top of Loveland Pass. A lot more trucks go over that pass at night then I expected. That morning, I headed up the SE ridge towards the summit of one of the easiest 13ers in Colorado, Mt. Sniktau. The summit is an easy objective from the pass, but the NE face is also steep, ascetic, and very visible from I-70. I had always wanted to ski this face but it is seldom explored due to avalanche conditions, and thus I decided it would be a great warm up.

At the top the snow was getting soft rapidly, and I began to punch through. But because this snow received direct sunlight all day I decided that this was not a fair assessment of the snow on the NE face. The way down that I saw was not steep so it would not be a risk for wet-slides. However, it was necessary to take care traversing the steeper slopes near the top in order to make sure that one did not get swept off the steep slope into the scree field. I actually broke off some tiny wet slabs in my attempt.

I reached the summit at about 10 30 and the day was already warm. There is almost no snow left in Colorado except on steep, shaded, NE aspects. However, I was able to see snow down to the lake below the face, however, the descent required that I take my skis off about 4 times for around 1500 ft of vertical.

When I reached the bottom of the lake, I looked up at the NE face proper and realized that it was holding more snow than I thought. Not only that but the snow here was much firmer despite the fact that it was after 11 30. I decided that it would be both safe and worth it to hike up the face and get another run in on steeper terrain. The sun had already stopped shining on the NE face for the day and the snow continued to support my boots so I was able to jet up to where the snow ended at just below 13,0000 ft very quickly. However, the clouds were darkening to the E and S, so I wanted to get off high places sooner rather than later.

The terrain was consistently steep with an interesting topography. The snow was just a few minutes past the perfect point in its transition cycle and yielded smooth buttery turns.

With that I decided it was time to end my day. I still had to regain the ridge and circle around Summit in order to get back to the pass. I estimate 3500-4000 ft of vertical gained that day.

Smashburger in Dillon was a worthy reward. Then I drove to Breckenridge and continued S on 9 to the base of Mt. Quandary. It rained the whole night through, but I spent the night warm and dry in my bivy sack. I suppose I could have slept in my car.

I was woken up the next morning by the sound of another vehicle arriving and several older dudes gathering their gear. I got out of my bivy and began to pack up my things. The other party left before me, but their objective had a longer approach. Still I left my camp much later than I had planned the night before. The rain had sapped my motivation, but hearing from this party about tracks they had recently observed helped reassure me that I would be able to find something to ski. My desired goal would be the North Couloir on Mt. Quandary, also known as the Quandary Couloir.

Quandary’s East Ridge is an easy hike and safe descent in Winter, and the Cristo Couloir is the classic more challenging descent, but neither one of those routes were holding a cm of snow, after all this was the non-winter of 2012. The North Couloir is the most challenging snow climb on Quandary and the most technical descent. Most climbers and skiers seeking a challenge choose the Cristo Couloir. The Quandary Couloir is supposedly somewhat comparable to the Dead Dog on Torrey’s in terms of width, length, difficulty, and exposure. The North Couloir is rated on the Dawson Danger Scale is rated at about D11,R2, G2. I feel that conditions could warrant a possible R3 rating, but the route is short, definite G2.

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