Ski in the front range? What???

     So another day off means another day of skiing.  Partly cloudy skies, mild winds, warmer temps set the stage.  I met up with a ski buddy or two and elected to hope for the near-impossible: ski something in the front range.  We were going to pick a place further out and plan for a long skin to see what we could see.  We did not get our hopes up for much vertical, you can see from the pics what the front range looks like now.
     We skinned back toward rabbit lake, eyeing the typical close front-range runs: peak 2, peak 3, any of the peak 4/flaketop gullies.  A peak 4 gully looked somewhat promising but we decided to keep skinning to check out Ptarmigan, maybe even the Suicides if we were ambitious and desperate enough.  There had to be snow somewhere.

     As we skinned across icy patches of tundra and rock we saw a large white swath that ran continuously from top of Ptarmigan to the valley floor.  OK, so there is snow, but is it ski-able?  We sure as heck were going to find out.  As we approached things looked better and better, my mind was drooling over the appetizing thought of skiing something today.  We skinned up a wind-buffed but carveable snow to the shoulder.  We noticed the gullies were loaded with more of what looked like softer snow.

 

     We were proven right.  We traverse-booted to a couloir, ate some food, soaked in the sun, ripped the skins and skied a pleasantly long run down to the valley floor.  After a second and shorter skin up to the shoulder and a ski down the large wind-blown field of snow we were able to ski almost the whole way back to the car.  Easy on us, but the dogs were definately beat.

     Driving back down to town I soaked up the water-color sky as the sun approached the cloudline.  My legs were tired, my stomach was hungry, my mouth was thirsty, but no big deal because it was worth it.  A small price to pay to spend a day in the backcountry with friends, doing what we love, no place to be, looking at a constant stream of national geographic quality views but actually being there.  mmmm,mmmm.  No words.  If you've been there you know what I mean.