The snow was pretty variable, but with some extremely good sections that skied incredibly well! We woke the next day to a frozen tent, with frost along the inside and soaked sleeping bags. Last week when I was considering different ski missions, mostly all of which were in the Gore Range, I decided I would just make it happen, and asked a good friend Chase Lindell if he wanted to join me on a classic Gore suffer-fest. After a nice refreshing lunch, we headed back out and continued on our journey back to the car. As we headed up valley, it was hard to take the eyes away from the North Couloir on Peak R. We might just have to go for it again. Lots of skiing,slogging long distances, huge volcanoes, lush rainforest, and incredible waterfalls are a few of the highlights. My folks have a place right there too and I‘ve been itching to get some lines on Buffalo. Its beautiful and gigantic east face stands out as one of the biggest faces in sight from the town of Silverthorne, and is something Ive always wanted to ski. We hung out for a minute to take in the spectacular views from the top, and made a speedy transition and were ready to ski! After hearing and reading about the classic “Snake Couloir” off of the north side of this massive mountain, I knew I had to ski it! Booting conditions were a bit tough, but we both knew it would be 100% worth it. A little over 3 miles later, the road to Yankee Boy Basin split off, and was completely snow covered, so we made the decision to camp there after finding a nice little dry spot in the woods. We quickly boiled water for our dinners, and ate them outside the tent while the storm continued to dump snow on us. We arrived in Ouray around 730pm and made our way to the trailhead up Yankee Boy Basin. It was 545 am when we were both out of the tent, and were on our skis heading up the rest of the road by 6. Still no problems though, just a little more difficult, little deeper steps. ( Log Out /  We stopped for a quick snack, put on our harnesses and got the rope ready for an amazing rappel right of the summit at 14,157 feet! I had talked to my co-worker and Grand Traverse partner Scott Winn about getting in a tour today also, so I let him know the plan, and all met at the trailhead around 9am for a 9:15 start up the Buffalo Cabin Trail. The mileage is never easy, and the terrain is insanely complex. The final 30 ft face to the summit was 55 degrees or so, leading to a very narrow summit. After a quick lunch and a change of socks, we packed up and headed out, making our way back to the bikes and back to the car for a very successful mission into my favorite mountain range! Around 3/4 of a mile in, we hit full snow and switched to our ski boots and skis. Download Agreement, Release, and Acknowledgement of Risk: Living under this guy gets me itchy all Winter. 2 hours after leaving our warm sleeping bags back at camp, we were standing at the base of Sneffels, ready to head up the Lavender Col and make a push for the Summit. Starr and I decided it would be best to take our skis off and boot around the exposed cliffs, so we did so and were able to saftely get them back on at the bottom of the exit ramp, and skied down though some 50 degree trees to the valley floor. There was a fresh 6-8 inches of untouched, cold powder that had stayed sheltered from the last storm over a week ago! 5hr summit at 13,950ft. Around 4.5 hours after leaving the trailhead, we reached the summit of Rain Peak in a complete whiteout. Travis, having already skied Moonshine last year, suggested that we go ski off the ridge a ways down into a sweet looking open bowl, and ski some better snow. Through a huge avalanche path, up and over a few ridges, and back down into Rock Creek we went, battling some more downfall along the way. It doesnt really get more central than Peak Z as far as the Gore Range goes, you can pretty much see everything from here. We skied the steep face down to where it meets the main part of the couloir, and enjoyed some more steep turns in the upper 40’s to where the couloir mellowed near the top of the apron. The lake was still 100% frozen, and the clouds were rolling in and out at a crazy rate of speed. It was a little past its prime as far as corn goes, but just being able to ski this face on a beautiful, warm and sunny day in the spring was certainly a treat. There was zero wind on the summit, and the sun was beaming down making for tee shirt weather at almost 14,000 feet! We traded off for about 3 hours. We both made a speedy transition, despite the urge I had to hang out up there all day, and started making our way down the amazingly huge east face. From here we would have around 7 miles back to Travis’s car that we had shuttled to the trailhead. Silver Couloir. Due to time constraints, and thinking about our long slog out, we decided to head up the North Couloir on R instead of pushing on up valley. One thing I’ve learned from endurance sports is that you tend to forget how hard things were when thinking back to them a year later. We made good time to the top of the northeast ridge of Arkansas, and continued up until we hit the Summit at 13,795 feet. The hiking down lower in the valley was pretty cruiser so we made decent time, despite the massive amount of deadfall across the trail. Awesome report. We discussed our options, and decided to go back to bed for another couple hours to see if the weather would break for us. On top of it all, there’s more downfall than one could ever imagine, and a lifetimes worth of post-holing and bushwhacking to be had. Since there are really no words to describe how awesome the last 9 days have been, I decided I would just post a bunch of pictures of what I experienced in the Northwest. We headed back down valley and arrived at camp around 30 minutes later, all smiles! Ill definitely be back to ski this one again! This route does not climb up the couloir. A trip that was a long slog last year in 3 days, we had just done in 2. We had planned on crossing to the south side of the creek right away, but the logs over the creek were sheer ice, so we decided it might be better to stay on the North. After reaching the summit, we made a quick transition and started skiing down the north side into the unknown. Maximum Elvis. We jam packed my small car full of gear and headed off towards the small town of Ouray on Monday afternoon to try and give this thing a go. Sunday, Im heading out to the Northwest for 10 days of volcano skiing with an awesome friend, David Lagreca! We glided onward to where we had transitioned from hiking shoes, and were finally able to take off our ski boots and rig our skis to our packs for a nice, long 2.5 miles back to the Columine Ranch for a 12.5 mile, 5000 vert tour in one of the greatest mountain ranges Colorado has to offer. At this point, we were over 6 miles in and around 4000 vert gained. Photo by Hannah. This looks perfect. Once we were down in the line, we quickly realized that the couloir we were going for was lacking a little snow, and was not skiable.