Busy spring. I just got back from Colorado and little spring skiing in the San Juans. My friend Liam Doran organized the whole trip and beforehand he had me pretty excited about the whole thing. The plan was to catch the Durango-Silverton train the first day it opens in Durango and then get off twenty miles later at Needle Creek in the San Juans. From there we are supposed to hike six miles up to 11,000 to get to Chicago Basin where we are camping for three nights. Sounds fun I guess. I have never taken a train into the mountains to go skiing but it sounds great.
So I left Salt Lake early in the morning May 1. I couldn’t resist stopping for a little bouldering in Price Canyon since it was right along the way.
Travis crimping on perfect little pockets.
After a sweet morning of bouldering Travis drove back to SLC and I continued south towards Durango. Following the same road I had oh SO many times to get to Moab or Indian Creek I felt like I was on autopilot. The drive flew by and soon enough I was crossing the border in Colorado and hour or so from Durango.
Did I accidentally drive to Kansas?
Once I arrived in Durango I met up with the crew: Liam, Jesse, Chuck, Michelle, Mark and Phillip. We met at the hotel and half the crew went food shopping while the rest of us organized gear and packed.
The family that organizes gear together, stays together. The married couple and closest thing we had to team leaders Jesse and Liam Doran organize gear at the hotel.
We woke up early to gray skies and rain. After a quick continental breakfast we loaded all our gear up and made our way to the train station.
The two hour train ride was beautiful even with the gray skies and lack of visibilty.
All good things come to an end and eventually we had to get off this train and into the rain to do some hiking.
Unloading the train at Needle Creek
A nice tight little package of fun!
From the train it is 4 or 5 hours to base camp at around 11,200. The trail is nice and consistent, never too steep but never really flat either. We hiked through the rain and mud for a couple hours before we pulled our skis and boots off of our back and were able to skin. As we gained elevation rain thankfully turned to snow.
This was a brief break in the storm that gave us our first glimpse of any of the peaks. We still had almost an hour of hiking left to get to camp.
Eventually we made it to camp and the clouds cleared for about an hour before dark
Home for the next three days.
After a damp night I waited to get out of my tent until I was sure the sun was up. As I poked my head out of the tent I saw Mark skinning off solo. I figured he was either cold or motivated, turned out he was both. I took advantage of the sun that morning, laying all of my soaked gear out to dry as I made breakfast. As we finished breakfast and packed up to go skiing the clouds moved in again. We skinned through they gray skies towards Mt. Eolus. We followed Mark’s skintrack until we met up with him. Mark was on his way down already having bagged Mt. Eolus. I asked Mark where he was headed and he responded “oh over there kind of…” pointing towards the other big peaks in Chicago Basin. Little did I know but Mark had his sights set on bagging three 14ers in day. We continued towards Mt. Eolus and Mark headed towards Sunlight and Windom peak. We skinned up the mellow apron until we came to the steep couloir that led to the south ridge of Mt. Eolus. We booted up the couloir until we reached a nice protected notch in the south ridge.
Chuck boots to the top of the couloir.
Philip on the final steps of the bootpack up the couloir.
At the notch the group decided to ski from there but Philip and I continued on towards the summit, just a couple hundred vertical feet from the notch. The ridge leading to summit included some exposed but safe scrambling on a rocky ridge. The weather was bad but we continued up the ridge until we reached the summit.
Philip and I on the summit.
The summit is actually 14,083.
Philip and I skied down the couloir and met up with the rest of the group on the apron. After some the salami and cheese the weather was getting even worse so we bailed back to camp, met up with Mark who had just successfully bagged three 14ers, made dinner and went to sleep early.
to be continued… Chicago Basin part 2 coming soon!
