The summer season is knocking at the door here in Crested Butte, and before the guiding and managerial workload starts in earnest for the summer season I took advantage of a brief window this Sunday and got out of town to go visit our neighboring San Juan Mountains, a few hours drive to the South.

The weather here in the Rocky Mountains continues to be very spring-like with lots of rain and snow squalls, making for difficult to predict hiking, mountain-biking, and rockclimbing conditions close to town.

If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em, right?… So we loaded the skis into the truck and armed with some beta on where the roads were plowed up to the trailheads, and the snow was still white and good, we headed south for a quick 24 hr ski and alpine climbing mission.

American Peak (13,806′) in the American Basin area below Handies Peak is famous for having lots of great steep couloirs for snow and ice climbing and skiing and allows high vehicle access to practically it’s base…so why not take advantage of the stormy weather.

Surrounded by 14er peak baggers headed for Handies Peak, we enjoyed complete solitude on it’s less famous but way more technical neighbor, and had a relatively quick approach hike in ski boots on the dry trail before being able to don skis and skins and head towards it’s eye-catching lines.

Great firm late-spring snow allowed for perfect alpine mountaineering conditions involving crampon and ice axe use, and we had our pick of multiple steep and challenging ski lines on American Peak’s north face.

The first couloir we chose was a fairly straight forward quick warm-up climb and ski before we began to work our way down the face and pick continually steeper and more challenging lines. The second was a beautiful steep and rock-walled couloir that felt like being in a giant rock-walled hallway, with perfect consistent pitch and snow conditions the entire way.

The third and final gem of the day, was a tad more alpine-esque in that it proved to be good mix of snow, ice, and rock, taking all types of alpine climbing & mountaineering skills and techniques, complete with an ice-climbing bulge and a near vertical rock wall finish in ski boots and crampons to reach the ridge just below the summit.

A perfect run of 1500′ of spring corn snow, brought us back to a quick dry walk to the car, and we were having beers on the tailgate by noon, before venturing back to Crested Butte for the evening.

American Basin is a great spot for quick and easy alpine access for either early season summer alpine snow and ice climbers, late season spring skiers looking for some challenging and quality lines, or the easy 14er climb in Handies Peak. Come check it out sometime….

—Jayson Simons-Jones (Owner / Lead Guide)

Despite some quite rainy and stormy spring weather in the mountains, we at Crested Butte Mountain Guides have begun daily guiding of our usual summer activity schedule. Last week was the first week of the summer season of guided rockclimbing in the Crested Butte area, as a few different brave souls gambled with the weather and ventured out with some of our guides for a day on the rock.

One of these trips involved longtime CBMG guest Karen Fontenot and her friend Amy Cansler who joined me for a few days of guided rockclimbing both in a local gym and out at Taylor Canyon for some fine afternoon climbing in the warm sun. Karen is now a seasoned climbing veteran having completed her first Black Canyon climb with me last Fall, and was able to help give Amy her first climbing experience, that I think she may now have become hooked on as well.

Looking forward to seeing you both again soon.

—Guide, Jayson Simons-Jones

This past weekend Vince Tinnirello and I attempted an early season climb of Little Bear Peak (14,037′) in the Sangre De Cristo mountains. Vince and I first climbed a Colorado 14er together last year on the Crestone Needle in less then ideal alpine conditions, but summited quite easily anyways. This trip was more of the same, with incredibly less then ideal conditions, but unfortunately this time we headed back down to the San Luis Valley without a summit of this challenging peak under our belt.

Spring storms are continuing to pound the mountains of Colorado daily with early and intense thunderstorms of rain, hail, and snow, with some storm systems lasting into the middle of the night or even a few days. This is what we encountered on last weekend’s alpine mountaineering trip, as a beautiful clear afternoon approach hike quickly turned into an intense hail and lightning storm that lasted all night, and turned to snow after midnight.

The 3:15am alarm on the watch went off, only to greet us with 4″ of fresh snow and relatively clear skies and warm temps…this turned out to be the joker we were dealt in our hand on summit day. The intense rain and warmer temps had turned the snowpack to complete mush with the lack of a freeze and right from camp we were met with some epic waist-deep post-holing that both slowed our progress and quickly deflated our motivations. Every mountaineer has to like suffering  with some discomforts, what with the early a.m. alarms, cold and sometimes miserable weather, and big tiring mountain days, but this was ridiculous….as 10 years of guiding in the mountains of Colorado had only served me these conditions a handful of times, and it almost never resulted in a fun or successful day. 

Needless to say, we had come all the way there, and the climb is relatively short and steep, so we endured the frequent waist-deep wallowing and its inevitable cursing and gave it a go. Vince, being fairly new to the snow climbing game, this was not a great introduction into crampon and ice axe technique and an experience in quick and safe travel over the frozen surface, but was instead more akin to a survival mission  of vertical wrangling through white quicksand.

Thus after many hours of slow, tedious, and frustrating steep and technical mountaineering under these conditions we called it quits near the 13,200′ mark, below the infamous ‘hourglass’ feature and it’s upper headwall, and decided to tuck tail and turn back before return conditions got (although hard to imagine) worse under the heat of the morning’s sun.

A few more hours later, and the occasional section of waist-deep trench warfare through the completely melted snow, found us back at camp somewhat relieved and quite tired despite our fairly short journey. From here we attempted to dry our feet and boots and packed up camp in the sunshine under the already threatening skies of another impending thunderstorm pummeling.

Then it was on back down the rugged Lake Como Road (if you can call it a road….more like a dry riverbed that people attempt to drive up)  to the truck and a 30 min bone-jarring 4×4 ride back to the desert floor at 8,000′, Vince’s car, and a long and stormy drive back home in our respective directions.

We’ll get ‘er done next time Vince, don’t you worry….it can’t get any worse……right?

—Guide, Jayson Simons-Jones