Join us this Saturday at Alison’s house in town for the biggest ski gear sale of the season, with all the local pros, rippers, and guides selling all their used, slightly used, or still new ski gear.

—CBMG Staff

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

It has been a fast and furious Spring ski mountaineering season for me, with the combination of a few far flung ski trips and the day-to-day of running Crested Butte Mountain Guides via a BlackBerry.

Quickly following the Haute Route Ski Tour across the pond in Europe, I came back through Crested Butte for a brief 4-day stint to catch up on office work, do laundry, and get in a day of work backcountry ski guiding on Whetstone Mountain. Then it was back on the plane heading farther West, and off to Valdez, Alaska…the undisputed home of helicopter skiing, birthplace of the World Extreme Ski Championships, and the site of this year’s American Mountain Guides Association Ski Mountaineering Guides Exam.

Arriving in Valdez 9-days early to train with other exam candiates, we were immediately greeted with the biggest avalanche cycle of the season, resulting in 2 deaths, 2 serious skier injuries, and many other skier triggered avalanches, all over the course of 2 days. Needless to say this upped the ante for our focus, training regime, and safety awarness.

The AMGA Exam process is an incredibly stressful and intensive process, with exam candidates taking turns guiding one another under the watchful eye of an IFMGA/UIAGM Guide/Examiner. The daily objectives are considerably longer and harder then a normal day of guiding, so as to see the guides ability to work in technical terrain with multiple clients under excessive stress and if they can handle it.

Obviously this instills confidence in a guide’s ability and a client’s feeling of safety in an AMGA Certified Guide.

The Ski Mountaineeirng program is arguably the most difficult with the largest amount of subjective decision-making and interpretation of terrain, conditions, and guiding tactics being required of a guide. Typical exam days were roughly 12-14 hours in length with 5000′-7000′ vertical on glaciated and steep technical Alaskan ski terrain.

Day 1 was the mandatory 40-minute crevasse rescue drill. A 1:1 scenario where the guide must catch a crevasse fall with skis on, build an anchor to transfer the fallen skier’s weight onto, rappell into the crevasse to attend to the fallen skier, then ascend back out, build a hauling system, and haul the fallen skier out safely…whew…..

Days 2-7 were all daily guided ski mountaineeirng tours through the vast and glaciated terrain of the Thompson Pass area of Valdez, AK. An area made famous by Doug Coombs and the last decade of extreme ski movie footage. Thankfully the weather during this stretch was complete Colorado bluebird, albeit unseasonably warm…and although whiteout navigation skills were somewhat of a non-issue, wet unconsolidated isothermic snow and bulletproof slide for life conditions more then made up for the guiding challenges and created quite alot of rope work and ski guiding trickery to keep everyone safe throughout the week.

Possibly one of my favorite days, of course….was the heli-drop day, as we got in a day of heli-skiing and I scored the lucky card of getting to on-sight down guide the first run of the day, down 2000′+ of steep and exposed pure Alaskan skiing!!!

Day 8 brought a final guiding challenge and examination sequence of dealing with a serious injury in the backcountry with a small guided ski party and no availablity for outside assistance…my client’s injury….a broken femure…ouch…glad I’m a WFR instructor.

Despite the intensity, inherent stresses, and long days (some ~20 hrs), the exam was a successful venture as I left not only with my official Ski Mountaineeirng Guide Certification, but also having made some new friends, and gotten to ski and work alongside some incredibly talented and best professional guides in the industry. And of course, all this in the original big mountain skiing mecca of Valdez, Alaska, and under an unprecedented stretch of clear and sunny weather!!!

Congrats everyone to giving it your absolute all and to earning your certification. Now I am looking forward to beginning the trip planning process of sharing this incredible venue with CBMG ski guests in the near future…..

—Jayson Simons-Jones (Owner / Lead Guide)

See more photos at: Valdez 2009

This past Saturday my good friend and backcountry partner Hutch Dubosque and I decided to break-away from the crowds at the US Extreme Freeskiing Championships going on at Crested Butte Mountain Resort, and head for the hills. We were able to get in a great ski mountaineering tour in the Slate River Drainage and spent the day up high in the alpine under bluebird skies getting in a mid-winter descent of two area classics: Augusta Mountain’s South Face & “The Nose” on Mineral Point’s Southeast Face.

The Crested Butte backcountry has received almost 2′ of new snow over the past 10 days, but warm and mild temps to start off the weekend have brought some pretty stable conditions and opened up some big and steep ski mountaineering lines on many of the local peaks.

“The Nose” line on Mineral Pt. is arguably one of the most aesthetic ski descents in the Crested Butte zone of the Elk Mountains. It is an immediately compelling line that draws one’s eye, and is steep, exposed, and committing. It is also a fantastic spring snow climb as well.

I’ve been eyeing this line on and off for almost 10 years, and on Saturday the conditions seemed good to give ‘er. With both of us training for a trip to Chamonix and the Swiss Alps, we headed out on a ski tour that took us up into Baxter Basin and around Cascade Mountain before heading up to the summit of Augusta Mountain (12,559′).

From here, we descended Augusta’s South Face in some fine wind-stiffened powder conditions. We then toured back up to the saddle and on up to the summit of Mineral Point (12,509′), where we dropped the direct and ever steepening “Nose” line for 3,000′ all the way back to the snowmachines.

A great day out in the mounatins with a great friend.

—Jayson Simons-Jones (Owner / Guide)

Once again over this past week Crested Butte was blessed with another heavy snowfall of 3+ feet, which was also again followed by beautiful cloudless Colorado blue skies and mild temperatures. This meant more fresh Crested Butte backcountry skiing with sunglasses and smiles.

Oklahoma native, and Crested Butte transplant in the making, Jason Leonard once again showed his impeccable timing for good skiing, and got in on the meat of the storm (see previous ‘White Room’ post ) and the first bluebird sunny day at the end as well. As the storm cleared and I had wrapped up my required mid-week AIARE Level 2 Instructor Training Course, we got after it on the steep gladed powder skiing on the North side of Snodgrass Mountain.

As is usually the case with Jason, once at the bottom we opted for a second lap, and took off breaking trail under the shadow of mighty Gothic Mountain. An hour later, we were farther out the ridge and away from the typical lines, in our own secret stash. Another 1500′ run to the road grade out, and another day of great skiing together.

Then on Saturday, Andy Herb, from Denver joined us for our NEW and popular Avalanche Refresher Course. Other course participants ended up with logistical complications and we opted to go out as a 1:1 ratio as a course/ski tour and were able to cover the course curriculum and get in about 2500′ of backcountry skiing as well.

Andy is a great skier, and thus we had fun ‘refreshing’ his previous Berthoud Pass Ski Patrol avalanche course training, and got in some excellent blue-sky powder skiing in the Crested Butte backcountry as well. The small nature of these courses allow us to integrate the field curriculum and skills into a real backcountry tour (nothing contrived here) and then supplement this with trailhead and classroom teaching time as well, to make this course as realistic and useful as possible to the participant.

Thanks guys for a great couple of days in the Crested Butte backcountry. Looking forward to many more turns in the future.

—Jayson Simons-Jones (Guide / Instructor)