Route: South Face, a.k.a. Birthday Chutes

Team: Ted, Christy

Christy had nine 14ers left to finish the list, and she was determined to get them done, so we headed to Ouray and set our sights on Sneffels. The days are short this time of year, so we started in the dark and drove the jeep road up towards Yankee Boy Basin.

We parked just past the fork with Yankee Boy Basin Road below the dramatic undercut. After following the summer road for a while, the Lavendar Col eventually came into view. We could skin to the top of the visible snow, but above that, we had to use crampons. I had memories of skiing down this route from 2000, but as we started up, it became apparent that we couldn’t actually connect it with the summit without some actual climbing. We had to go another way. It needed a season full of snow to make it continuous.

As we searched for a more suitable route, we found ourselves further over on the south face of the mountain. After some repeated stretches of climbing and traversing, we neared the summit. Being January, the snow was thin, and our crampons were going through the snow and right to the underlying rock. There’s a reason why this sort of thing is usually considered a spring sport—there’s just not that much snow early in the winter.

After a quick transition at the summit, the early sunset was upon us so we made our way down the thin snow and back to the truck, finishing by headlamp.

Next up, we headed to San Luis Peak for another January descent.