Turned around on Torreys

Trailhead- top of Loveland Pass

We wanted to ski something big now that spring has come in the front range mountains of Colorado. Last year we skied the Tuning Fork on Torreys Peak in winter conditions and it was unbelievable. Never have I skied a 14er in powder conditions until then. On April 15th we decided to head out and ski it again....
We parked at the top of Loveland Pass.
We left at around 6am and made fairly quick time up the ridge to the top of the Divide. The trail was covered in snow in places and we made quick work of the hike.
Once we hit the ridge I snapped a photo of Torreys Peak and the Tuning Fork. Our first impressions were that the both Torreys and Grizzly Peaks weren't holding much snow on their northern aspects.



Sunrise over Kelso and Torreys

Surrounding ranges and mountains

Once we were to the top ridge(Continental Divide)I wanted to get some shots of the surrounding areas and ranges so folks planning ski descents in the next few weeks could see how everything else is holding snow. Here are some shots.....

Mt Guyot and Bald Mountain- prominent peaks

Quandry's north and east faces in the distance. Breckenridge ski area in the lower right part of the photo. Keystone's "steep" slopes in the lower middle.

Ten mile range

Gore range

Buffalo Mountain

The Citadel, Hagar mountain and Pettingel Peak. I feel like this was my best photo of the trip. The morning like just peaked over the horizon to shine proudly on this area. Very happy with the results.

Sniktau to our north...its east face looks like a great ski descent. We are currently getting more storms so that one might go on the list.

Meeker and Longs off in the distance

And our first full view of the northwest side of Torreys Peak

Our ski descent down to the base of Torreys

Here is our complete line as we made our way down from the top of the Divide to the base of Torreys. This area had a good freeze the night prior and was icy for our descent.
We snapped a couple of photos of Grizzly Peak's north and north east side as we slid down....

North side of Grizzly and the north east side

We trekked to the left side of the Tuning Fork so we could start climbing up. We crossed old slide debris to get there. Once on the left side we noticed the first few hundred feet was a slab that spanned the width of the couloir. It was about 5 inches thick on top of a faceted layer. The sugary snow made for terrible boot packing, and we were afraid that the slab would cut loose when we started our descent later in the day. There was a storm the week prior that brought a small amount of snow, but a shit load of wind. We believe that was the time the slab formed.
We decided to pull the plug and head back to the Loveland Pass area and ski something over there.

Here's Kevin getting the hell out of there. Once at the bottom of the couloir we cut left and skied to the lower apron of Grizzly.

Skinning back to the Divide

The tracks above were creamy and the best of the morning. We refueled in this area then started the long slog back up.....


Here's Kevin skinning up. We spotted a bench from a distance that looked like an easy skin out. As we we moved closer it wasn't so flat.


Looking back at our progress. There are numerous ski lines in this area. Grizzly was holding decent snow on it's northeast and northwest sides, but not so much on it's north flank.
There was a dust layer from a wind event weeks prior. Unfortunately this will speed up the melt cycle. Hopefully it will keep snowing and we won't have to worry about it for a little longer.

Dave's Wave ski descent

We didn't realize that Dave's Wave was going to be directly on the side of the area we skinned up. We were thinking about retracing our steps a bit then dropping in closer to the area we parked, but once we looked down this line we had to ski it. Nice pitch and fairly long- we decided to drop in.

Top of the line

Looking into the natural half pipe- our descent line is in red.

Here's Kevin dropping in. This line has a nice pitch- maybe 30 to 35 degrees. Perfect for linking big fast turns.


Our tracks near the bottom. All in all it was a fun ski descent. The time wasted checking Torreys out allowed the snow on this west aspect to soften up.

End of the line- Arapahoe Basin ski area. Fun day overall even though we didn't ski our main objective. I believe we made the right decision. The Tuning Fork didn't feel right and both of us had a bad feeling about it while we stood on it. We'll get it another day.....
Thanks for reading!

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