Skiing Red Peak in Spring Conditions

We were looking for a moderate day trip and ended up deciding on the prominent SE bowl on Red Peak as seen from Silverthorne



The approach was long and tough, but the skiing was great. Below treeline the snow was quite junky, thin crust over significant facets. Thankfully while we were on the trail it was well compacted. Once we got off the trail we sank through the facets quite deeply.

We got off the trail before(East of) the junction to Buffalo and headed up the hill to the North. We found the eastern portion of this hillside to have extensive deadfall, so went a little more West until we found an area without as much down trees.


The hillside was mostly bare of snow, so we transitioned to hiking. It was a bit slick and some of the trees were standing dead and quite rotten.

Once we neared the ridge there was snow again and we resumed skinning. Here some of the party started to have some skin issues with extensive snow glopping on the bottom. In due course we arrived in the bottom of the bowl.

The four with skin issues decided to take a mellow ski to the South while the rest of us(3) headed North to the high ridge.

Winston, Kate and I enjoyed turns next an aesthetic rock band.

We turned around after the majority of the vertical was done and started skinning further into the cirque.

We found another fun line and I managed to get some more pictures of Kate and Winston. We also caught the other party's nice looking descent.

We joined them in the basin and three of us decided to go for one last descent and to meet the others back at the car.

After a good skin and then bootpack we saw a very nice looking South facing line and decided to drop that. It was steep at the top and there was a fun optional choke part way down.