Konsella Brittany - Backcountry Ski & Snowboard Routes: Colorado

BACKCOUNTRY
SKI & SNOWBOARD
ROUTES

COLORADO

BACKCOUNTRY
SKI & SNOWBOARD
ROUTES

COLORADO

BRITTANY WALKER KONSELLA
AND FRANK KONSELLA

FOREWORD BY CHRIS DAVENPORT

Mountaineers Books is the publishing division of The Mountaineers, an organization founded in 1906 and dedicated to the exploration, preservation, and enjoyment of outdoor and wilderness areas.

1001 SW Klickitat Way, Suite 201, Seattle, WA 98134

800.553.4453, www.mountaineersbooks.org

Copyright 2017 by Brittany Walker Konsella and Frank Konsella

Foreword 2017 by Chris Davenport

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Distributed in the United Kingdom by Cordee, www.cordee.co.uk

First edition, 2017

Copyeditor: Paula Thurman

Design: Peggy Egerdahl

Layout: McKenzie Long

Cartographer: Pease Press Cartography

The background maps for this book were produced using the online map viewer CalTopo. For more information, visit caltopo.com.

All photographs by the authors unless otherwise noted

Cover photograph: A skier milks the edge of the trees on Mount Shimer. (Photo by Jordan White)

Back cover photograph: A steep descent on the upper reaches of Dragons Tail Couloir

Frontispiece: You will find beautiful views while climbing up the Y Couloirs of Maroon Peak.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Konsella, Brittany Walker, author. | Konsella, Frank, author.

Backcountry ski & snowboard routes : Colorado / Brittany Walker Konsella and Frank Konsella.

Backcountry ski and snowboard routes

First edition. | Seattle, Washington : Mountaineers Books, [2017] | Includes index.

LCCN 2017016912| ISBN 9781594858826 (paperback) | ISBN 9781594858833 (ebook)

LCSH: Cross-country skiingColoradoGuidebooks. |SnowboardingColorado

Guidebooks. | Cross-country ski trailsColoradoGuidebooks. | Outdoor recreation

ColoradoGuidebooks.| ColoradoGuidebooks.

LCC GV854.5.C6 K66 2017 | DDC 796.93/209788dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017016912

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Printed on recycled paper

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-59485-882-6

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-59485-883-3

CONTENTS

TOURS AT A GLANCE

FOREWORD

THE COLORADO MOUNTAINS HAVE LONG BEEN a source of inspiration and pride to the people who see them. Today, about 95 percent of all people living in Colorado enjoy a vista of the Colorado mountains from at or near their homes. These mountains call to us, as they did the intrepid miners of the nineteenth century and the early climbers of the twentieth century, like Albert Ellingwood and Carl Melzer.

My own history with Colorados mountains began with my parents, who both attended the University of Denver in the late 1960s and brought our family out from New Hampshire each winter to ski at Arapahoe Basin and Keystone. In the summers, we hiked and camped in the mountains, and I fell in love with the adventures the peaks and valleys provided. On my first fourteener ski descent of Torreys Peak in 1990, I realized that my skiing and climbing upbringing back East formed a perfect foundation for a graduate degree in mountaineering right here in Colorado.

Upon moving to Colorado in 1989, I promptly purchased Dawsons Guide to the Colorado Fourteeners by Lou Dawson. This newly published book was the first Colorado guidebook with a focus on skiing the high peaks, and it also set the stage for what would be a twenty-seven-year (and counting) obsession for me with ski mountaineering. The Colorado mountains, when covered with a white mantle of snow, provide a dynamic, ever-changing challenge. Unlike the more static personality of these peaks in the summer, in winter and spring conditions they change by the day, oftentimes by the hour. Timing is everything, and to succeed in this environment I had to educate myself in the practices, or perhaps art forms, of snow safety, backcountry travel, risk management, and advanced ascent and descent techniques, just as all aspiring ski mountaineers must do.

In 2006, I took on a project that would in some ways come to define me as a skier. There are fifty-four official 14,000-foot summits in Colorado. During the winter and spring of that year, I undertook to climb and ski them all. My inspiration for this effort came from Lou Dawson himself, his seminal guidebook that I had purchased as a teenager, and the personal challenges these peaks presented to me. In climbing and skiing these high mountains, I was challenged physically while also learning what I was capable of in life. As the American poet T. S. Eliot said, Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go. In taking on this challenge and accepting and managing the risks involved, not only was I able to finish the project the following winter, but I certainly learned a ton about myself and the mountains of Colorado.

The authors of this guidebook, Frank and Brittany Konsella, have undergone a similar journey. Both have spent many hundreds of days over the years seeking out skiing adventures on our high peaks, and both can count ski descents of all fifty-four Colorado fourteeners on their rsumsa feat fewer than twenty people have accomplished. If there is one thing we all have learned through these experiences, its that many lifetimes worth of adventures exist out there. Its just up to us to seek them out.