Route: South Face to Lavendar Col

Team: Ted, Jann Stoeckl

In June, Jann Stoeckl and I were headed to Denali with Aspen friends Sean Shean and Brad Smith. The four of us had the month of May to prep for what would be my biggest mountain expedition to date. This seemed to fit as preparation.

We drove to Ouray and then up the Camp Bird Mine Road until snow stopped us just before the Yankee Boy turnoff. We skinned the road and set up camp with a lot of new Denali gear; it was fun. We were moving before dawn, getting high up into Yankee Boy basin, our goal being the south side of Sneffels.

We climbed the South Face, a.k.a. Birthday Chutes, on perfect frozen snow. There wasn’t a breath of wind on the summit, and because we got started early and moved fast, we could hang out on the summit and take in the views as we let the snow soften. Sneffels is awesome; the view to the north is vast, with huge relief down towards Montrose, and the impressive-looking Snake Couloir can be seen just off the summit. I would get to experience that in 2005. To the south, the view is even more staggering, with an endless sea of San Juan peaks of all shapes and sizes.

Ski lines are literally everywhere. You could visit this area every spring for years and always have something different to ski. This was one of those days that validated some of the suffer-fests I’ve experienced on other trips. These days are the reason we do this.

We skied corn down to the Lavender Col and then cruised back to the truck. We were back in Aspen that night. Later in the week, I would get deeper into the San Juans— we were headed into Chicago Basin.