Spring Ski Tour - Hiking 8 Miles in Ski Boots 🙃
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- Опубликовано: 16 июн 2021
- Welcome to another episode of Tips Up! Today, we are skiing a local backcountry spot... in June!
Ski touring in the spring is a lot different than touring in the winter, just because the objective hazards do change considerably. And just the way you have to think about and plan your day changes a lot. So in the winter, you're most of the time looking for a fresh pow, cold stable pow and your primary hazards are things like slab avalanches, and you're always touring in the cold, you're always going to be on a skin track. However, in the spring, getting to your objective might be a bit of a more interesting adventure.
It snows a lot softer, so you might be post-holing. We will probably be hiking our skis over some dirt, some rocks, some exposure, just because this time of year, a lot of this road is going to be melted out.
The other really important part about spring skiing is that you're often not really looking for pow. If you are, that's great, but more often than not, you're trying to time the corn cycle right. So what we're trying to do today is... time our ascent correctly so that when we are skiing down, we are getting it in primo corn conditions, but it's not too wet and soft that wet avalanches become a problem. So, there is this sort of awkward, delicate balance of spring skiing that makes it really hard to time the day. We are here a bit early, so we may be waiting on the summit for a little bit waiting for it to soften up. But, I think we will, probably like most spring tours, be dealing with this situation in which we're skiing down, we get some really good corn, and then the bottom run out is going to be muddy, shitty wet... just it's going to be sort of a sloggy run out. That's what happens when you tour in the spring I mean, it's June and we're skiing, so... can't really complain.
The spring is a super cool time to be skiing in Colorado because you get stuff like that waterfall behind me just cause there's so much snow melt going on. That's not happening later in the summer, and it's obviously not happening in the winter either. See, the terrain and the sort of scenery really changes this time of year. If you look up in that gully up there in the winter, when we ski this... That goal is in play. You can ski that out and it's actually a really fun sort of section of this ski, but you can see right now it's totally exposed with rocks and chunder, and I don't even think it looks like it connects right now.
So...something you have to think about in the spring a lot is, A: snow covers, is they're going to be enough snow, and B: if there is snow, how deep is that snow? Are there rocks under it? Just because rocks are a big concern this time of year, both under the snow and falling on top of you. So... we'll be booting up the couloir in a little bit, and you don't want to be late on those just because the sun will heat up the rocks and rocks will start sort of raining down the couloir, so... You do have to be a bit careful this time of year. It's just a different objective hazard than in the winter.
We made it to the bottom of the couloirs. It took us a lot longer than we thought. We had to transition 10 to 15 times going over streams, mud, rock, scrambling. So we are a bit later than we thought we were going to be, which means it's... The snow is hotter. I'm not quite sinking to my boot tops, but we can feel it down here starting to get pretty, pretty wet. So we're going to try and get this boot pack as quick as we can and get this line in the bag and then get home safely before we both overheat and die.
We're about halfway up right now, and we are turning around. The snow conditions have deteriorated really, really quickly on this boot pack. We just set in, we were sinking... close to our knees on the way up here. So, that is an indication to us that the snow is way too hot. There's... wet slide debris all over the place. You can sort of see it all around here. So... with a wet slide hazard and the rockfall hazard, it's just, we're here too late. So, we're going to turn around now, and sometimes this happens, sometimes the mountains just tell you to turn around and so you got to do it. So we're going to get the hell out of here and probably slog our way back to the car. It's probably going to take us a long time because we do have the very flat exit followed by mud and hiking and exposed streams and things like that, but still a good day in the Alpine. 
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Great content. Looking forward to more this winter. We are out of Colorado Springs and recently getting into backcountry skiing and skimo. See you on the slops of breck this season.
Thanks! See you out there!
Skiing in June and I'm trying to get my AC working cuz it's 90f here. Jelly
The perks of living at 10,000 feet!
Ok next year l will have to join you guys
Deal!
Good info and context but your poles drive me nuts
Good comment but your grammar drives me nuts
@@GladeOpticsTipsUp touche
what's with the stupid poles?
They are Folkrm poles - made specifically for touring. I prefer the extended grips vs. adjustable poles because it gives me more options when side hilling a skin track or bootpacking up something steep. We are not affiliated with them but you can check them out on folkrm.com. Black Crows makes a similar set of poles as well.
@@GladeOpticsTipsUp whatever works for you I guess.
@@invisninja1566 you guess right....stick to the blue groomers.
@@Dubmcbogie aww... someone is upset I made fun of his silly poles