Peak One

March 8, 2016

The beginning of February brought us some really good powder here in Summit County. Just as things were shaping up to be a promising month for snow, a trend of warm weather began and persisted for a period that had everyone dreaming of more pow days. The mild temperatures were a nice break from the ice climbing and avalanche safety level 2 classes I took at CMC Breckenridge. During the avalanche level 2 class we performed snow profiles all around Summit County and things were looking quite stable. Thanks Dan Moroz for such a great class!

Pat “Perry” Johnson and I decided to take advantage of the relatively stable conditions and go after a bigger line. After some thought we decided to climb Peak One from Mt. Royal and tentatively descend the eastern ridge, leaving us some room to judge the conditions once onsite and maybe take a different line.  We skinned up to the top of Mt. Royal and transitioned to crampons at the start of the ridge to the summit of Peak One.

The traverse turned out to be really fun and we took a route that added a bit of spice through a steep chimney. We topped out on the summit and transitioned over, leaving our crampons on for a bit of a down climb through some rocks to the start of the actual line.

Once we made it to our drop zone we strapped in and started down the eastern ridge, assessing the condition as we went. Peaking into the northern facing lines, we found some undesirable snow conditions and continued on, dropping into a nice lower angle north face further down. After a great descent from our main objective we continued back to the bike path, encountering some very wet snow on our way out.  It was awesome to finally climb and snowboard descend such a great peak so close to home.