Route: Northeast Face (Belford), Southwest Face (Oxford)

Team: Ted, Christy, Lou & Louie Dawson, Jordan White

The caller ID said, Lou Dawson. The father and son duo was considering a trip to Belford and Oxford and offered the invite. So Christy and I met them, along with Jordan White, at the Missouri Gulch TH the evening before.

Aside from a single spring ski day up on Independence Pass, I hadn’t spent much time with Lou, and considering how significant 14er skiing has been for me, I owe him a good amount of credit as an influence. I wouldn’t describe him as a direct mentor, but having hailed from Long Island, my mountaineering experience came since arriving in Colorado, often with his guidebook. I was a novice to all this until I borrowed skins and some Alpine Trekkers and tagged along on a trip to ski Mount Sopris. Later that summer, I climbed Pyramid Peak, bought his guidebook, and went to work.

The 3:30 a.m. alarm clock the mentor suggested didn’t sound so fun, though. It was shockingly early, in my opinion, though. It’s only a few miles to the summit, and being accustomed to calling the shots and preferring to sleep in whenever possible, I wasn’t sure if I should say anything if he considered a later start reckless. So I told Lou I thought 3:30 was just what we were thinking and went back to the truck to break the news to Christy– she thought I was joking. She likes to stay in the sleeping bag even more than me!

So we were up early. The snow started a few hundred yards from the truck, so we skinned the switchbacking trail to treeline and headed for the low-angle couloir lookers left of Belford’s Northwest Ridge. Near the top, the steep skinning forced a transition to boots, and we arrived at the summit– early. Early was good, though; the rocky nub atop Belford never holds snow, so we pulled out the shovels and dug ourselves a little kicker to allow us to ski right from the exact summit, albeit via a small amount of airtime. It was fun, kept us warm, and provided a few laughs at the acrobatics witnessed.

Once off the top, we skied down the northeast side towards Oxford. I was excited for several reasons– to have claimed another summit, for the new BD skis I was on, and for the company present, to name a few; I charged ahead until some breakable snow took me down. Upon righting myself, with a fat lip and missing ski, Lou mentioned, in full parental tone, that we might want to take it easy and not have any accidents. It was a little embarrassing, but I quickly put it behind me.

We skied down, hanging a right to meet up with the Oxford/Belford saddle, racking our skis, and going for the second summit of the day. The coverage on Oxford was poor, and the winds were bad, so we spent only a short time up there before billy-goating a line down the west side. Down in the basin, we pulled out the skins, headed back across the Belford/Pecks Peak saddle, and got ourselves back down into Missouri Gulch. We skied the tight switchbacks back to the TH.

It was a very fun day, particularly because of the new ski partners. Five weeks later, after some classic ski descents in the Tetons and Pacific Northwest and a trip to Iceland, I got back to the 14ers with Tabegauche.

Read Lou’s post on the day here.