Welcome to Louis (Lou) Dawson's backcountry skiing information & opinion website. Lou's passion for the past 50 years has been alpinism, climbing, mountaineering and skiing -- along with all manner of outdoor recreation. He has authored numerous books and articles about
ski touring and is well known as the first person to ski down all 54 of Colorado's 14,000-foot peaks, otherwise known as the
Fourteeners! Books and free ski touring news and information here.
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Just in time. Thanks for the Inde help Lou. See you up there!
Thank you for doing this. I own the paper version but this is a great resource. It seems you should be getting more automtoive advertisers soon…
Lou,
Your effort on this just reminded me that Marcus Libkind has done the same for his out-of-print touring guidebooks for California. He’s a bit more XC-oriented, but there’s some heavy BC stuff in there too. http://www.backcountryskitours.com/
Online resources like these are sweet (at least if they’re not displacing sales of something of yours that is actually in print).
I remember when Marcus was working on that, but I didn’t track. I’ll have a look. He’s always worked hard at communicating that terrific stuff they have out west.
Dang automotive media buyers, they just don’t understand WildSnow.com (grin)!
Lou: Can you provide a teaser of three peaks near Independence Pass to hit this week that are not always is such prime conditions?
G, interesting idea, but in truth I’d say there isn’t much that’s new, just better. Also, while the alpine is better than ever, it is indeed a bit unconsolidated down low. Combine that with warm temps and skiing things that finish low may not be as good as they look. Also, while a lot of stuff is amazingly fat, western reaches up high are still wind scoured in areas as they always are up there, so that makes it not as overall caked as one might assume.
So, up in the alpine, what’s fat that’s usually not so fat? East sides of Blue and Blarney are looking very good. Climb out. We went down to North Fork of Lake Creek yesterday from there, starting from one of the easterly runs off Blue. Had a great run up high but slush bushwhacking to exit. If there was a better exit trail to that it would be a much more amazing option, as once you hit the valley you’re only a half mile from the road, downhill. The USFS trial crew should go up there and flag and limb out an exit trail for us. Or wait, perhaps they should spend that money on showing up just ONCE during the weekend to explain the Wilderness boundary to snowmobiliers…
Really, anything east facing you’ve always wanted to do is going to be way better than normal, with west just above average because of wind scour. Just a general impression, micro climes will vary.
Oh, another idea, various line on that northerly stuff on Independence Mountain and Green Mountain also have way more options than normal. So there you go, another idea.
Grizzly is looking amazing, as is Truro. I heard there were some guys on Griz today.
Some top layer slabs still pulling out once things soften, that’s pretty interesting to see this time of year…
We were up there for 3 days and nights, what a great 3 days of skiing! Not enthused about the weather tomorrow (Monday), but if I’m mistaken more power to you all!
Lou