Route: Northeast Face

Team: Ted, Christy

This was the final day of Christy’s super-busy 2009 spring. The day after skiing Wetterhorn Peak, a spring storm moved in and closed the road to the summit of Pike’s Peak. Upon being turned around at the gate on Pikes, we decided to race up to Evans and try to salvage the ski day. It was Memorial Day Weekend, and the Mount Evans Highway had just opened.

It was a wet, stormy day. Not quite so brutal that we couldn’t attempt a ski descent, but the weather was just miserable enough to make the day a challenge. We parked at the Summit Lake parking area and walked the highway to the bottom of the Northeast Face. The skinning was easy from there, and the storminess of the day dropped just enough new snow to allow us to skin right to the summit benchmark!

We got in our skis above the summit parking area and skied down the summer hiking trail that connected to the Northeast Face. Soaked through, we walked back to the truck on the highway and headed back to Aspen, calling it the end of our 2009 season.