Route: Silver Creek Cirque

Team: Ted (solo)

After a warmup on Quandary Peak a few days earlier, I headed alone to get some peaks skied without recruiting partners too heavily. I generally don’t like solo days but sometimes you just have to go out on your own or risk using your available days waiting on others. I knew Sean was available in a couple of weeks so I mapped out some peaks we would hit together, and then headed out to do some easier ones on my own beforehand.

From the highway north of Buena Vista, you can see the big Silver Creek Bowl on Yale’s east side. It provides a great picture of the snow coverage, and it looked good. Also nice was the fact that the snow closure was right at the trailhead, where the Colorado/Main Range Trail runs north/south through the Sawatch Range.

After camping at the truck, I was up and out early. The snow-covered trail was tough to follow at times, and after extensive consultations with the map, I broke off from the trail as planned and headed up into the bowl. It’s a pretty nice route, although the snow was very hard, and crampons were needed for a short section in the middle.

After some self-timer selfie shots at the top, I was skiing back down just as I came up. With the firm snow that day, I was comfortable with the avalanche risk, though I still took it slow back to the truck.

I figured while I’m here skiing, I should keep at it. Maybe there’s a summit in the Sangres that could melt out early before spring really arrives. Let’s check out Humboldt Peak.