Route: North Face

Team: Ted, Dirk Bockelmann

After skiing the north side of El Diente, we traversed as far as we could towards Mount Wilson and began climbing. We switched off trail-breaking duty at regular intervals and made pretty good time up the North Face.

At the top of the snowy north face, there is a thumb of exposed rock about 50 feet high that I’ve always considered unskiable. On prior summer trips, I’ve witnessed groups with ropes and protection in place to complete the airy moves.

When Dirk and I were here in 2004, the primary other documented descent we knew of and hoped to repeat was that by Lou Dawson, who skied from the highest snow rather than the exact summit. That was what we did on this day. We left our skis at the base of the rocky summit block, and we climbed to the summit in our ski boots.

Once we were down from the summit, we stepped into our skis and began down. For the few of us pursuing 14er ski descents at the time, this was an acceptable summit ski descent.

In subsequent years, it’s been determined that both Mount Wilson and El Diente are, in fact, skiable from their exact summits via slightly different routes off the top. I felt it was important to ski from the exact summits, and I returned with Christy in 2010 to do it properly.

We headed back to camp. Tomorrow we would go to Wilson Peak.