This sure looks fun! Producer Barry Stevenson (Outside Adventure Media) made this short film of San Juan Airheads George Brewster, Matt Hepp, and Parker McAbery above 12,000 feet on McMillan Peak, above Red Mountain Pass.

Christy Mahon begins the exposed traverse off the summit of Capitol Peak. Fredrik Marsater/Fredrikmarmsater.com

With big storms blanketing the high peaks in early May, the last 10 days have seen several remarkable descents on Colorado 14ers:

• On May 9, Jarrett Luttrell climbed and snowboarded Capitol Peak, making the probable first snowboard descent, via the Secret Chute line on the east face. With him was Brittany Walker, who proceeded to complete the second ski descent of Capitol by a woman. (The first was by Pam Rice.) Walker now has only four peaks left on her list of 14ers to ski. Also with them were Matt Kamper and Jordan White, who became the second person to ski Capitol twice! This was also the first known time that Capitol has been skied in May.

The Secret Chute line on Capitol Peak's east face. Courtesy of 14erskiers.com

• One week later, on May 16, Christy Mahon skied Capitol and thus became the first woman to ski all of the Colorado 14ers from their summits. She skied with her husband, Ted, who also has completed all the 14ers on skis, along with Joey Giampaolo and Fred Marmsater. Mahon ticked Pyramid, another crux on the list, on May 7, a day on which at least five people skied the peak. This year she also has skied Holy Cross, Mt. Wilson, El Diente, Pikes, Little Bear, and San Luis. A strong finish!

• Also on May 16, Jarrett Luttrell headed to Longs Peak, the last 14er on his list. With the northern Front Range smothered in snow, the Keplingers Couloir route on the south face was nearly a foregone conclusion, and with this descent Luttrell became the first person to snowboard all the Colorado 14ers.

Congratulations to everyone!

Boulder-based photographer Fred Marmsater sent us this inspiring gallery of April skiing above Gothic, near Crested Butte, and on the west side of the Indian Peaks. Be sure to visit his website for more great images.

Beautiful views helped ease the pain of a punishing course. Photo by Kate Lapides

Randonee racer Bryan Wickenhauser reports on the first Five Peaks ski mountaineering race in the Ten Mile Range above Breckenridge—a monster course that gained 10,000 vertical feet. Thirty-five teams of two braved the challenge on April 10; see the Five Peaks website for full results and links to photos. Here’s Wick’s report:

The inaugural Five Peaks race lived up to its hype as North America’s longest ski mountaineering race, with 10,000 feet of vertical and five separate ascents behind and in the Breckenridge ski resort. My teammate for the race was my fellow Team Crested Butte member Jon Brown. We’ve both been racing in the COSMIC Series for the last four years, and we train all the time together—perfect partners!

The weather going into Friday night called for temps bottoming out at 20°F with light winds for Saturday and sunny skies. Really a perfect forecast for an April ski mountaineering event. The start was classic Alpine at 6 a.m., so we awoke at 4:30 a.m. to get our breakfast on and have time for a brief warm up at gear check.

The start was at the base of Peak 9 at about 9,600 feet, and our first summit would be Peak 10, about 4,000 feet higher! We skinned our way up some mellow groomed runs to the top of the ski area, where we continued though a backcountry gate. Now we began to get into more technical skinning, as we were above tree line and the winds had taken most of the loose snow and deposited it elsewhere (like hopefully on the descents).

Our climb up to the peak took us past some old mining cabins and onto a ridge where the first gusty winds of the day greeted us. Upon gaining the ridge. it was only a five-minute skin to the peak. Ninety minutes from the base area, we were at the top of Peak 10 at 13,643 feet, where some hardy volunteer offered us coffee and candy corn. We politely declined, ripped our skins, and dropped in on a techie entrance. With some nasty rocks to negotiate, we followed the prescribed line into the main open bowl and some really good spring powder. Until now we had been in first place, but on the downhill we were overtaken by Monique (Mona) Merrill (event co-director) and Mike Kloser. The battle was beginning to heat up!

Follow the green arrows.... About 10,000' of vertical in all.

Two of the beautiful aspects of this race, in my mind, were the long, demanding descents and the dramatic views. Above tree line for much of the day, we were exposed to the elements but were getting views that the skiers in the resort below only wished they could see!

The second climb was the shortest of the day, and Jon and I rallied up to the top of Peak 9 together with Team Kloser/Merrill. Thus we settled into a rhythm for the rest of the day:  We would catch them on the climbs, and they would pass us on the descents.

At the top of Peak 9 we skied back down into the upper section of Breckenridge Resort and were integrated with tourists. We all followed Mona, as it’s her local ski resort, down to the transition area.

On up to Peak 8 (Imperial Bowl), the skinning got techie again as refrozen, skied-off snow proved to be quite difficult for side-hilling. Jon and I regained contact with Mona and Mike at this point, and we passed them prior to getting to the lone boot pack of the day, up to the ridge of Peak 8. The boot pack was well-designed with a hand line for those in need. At the top of the ca. 400-foot booter, we slapped on our skis and skinned up the ridge past a number of chutes that led to Imperial Bowl.

Bryan Wickenhauser and Jon Brown, with team Merrill/Kloser in hot pursuit. The downhills would clinch it. Photo by Kate Lapides

From the summit, it was back into the resort with a high-speed descent though refrozen, slightly soft bumps and newer snow on Horseshoe Bowl. Mike and Mona again passed us and led us down through some technical traverses to the lower flanks of Cucumber Bowl and into the T-Bar lift line for our third transition. Race co-director Pete Swenson had warned us at the prerace meeting that this would be the “steepest skinning of the day,” and it sure was! For every racer I talked to afterward, this was the low point of the day. The combination of at least 2.5 hours of racing already completed, direct sun, no wind, and a steep, lengthy pitch made you want to trade imaginary spots with someone in Death Valley , because that might feel cooler.  Dripping sweat and moving a quarter mile an hour…ugh!

Luckily it wasn’t more than 15 minutes before we got above tree line again and caught a cool breeze. We topped out on Peak 8 for the second time just before Mike and Mona, and with no other teams really pressing us from behind the battle was among friends at this point.

Descending Peak 8 to the northeast, Mona again led the way down the Whales Tail to near the summit of Peak 7 Chair for the fourth and final uphill transition. From here it was up Art’s Bowl, with technical skinning on wind-hammered sastrugi to the top. There was nothing we could do to try and shake Mona and Mike on the climb; everyone was tapped from nearly four hours of racing. The writing was on the wall: They owned us on the downhills. Heading off Peak 7, Mona and Mike gained the separation and never looked back. We made our way down to claim second overall and first in the men’s category, two minutes behind the winners at 4:08.

Hats off to Pete Swenson for designing a truly European-style course that flowed as if it was meant to be. I know Pete and Monique are already excited for the second edition, and so am I!

The Thunderbird and Serpent above Palisade. Photo by Seth Anderson

It’s not often you get good first-hand accounts of serious avalanches. Often the victims are too shaken or chastened by the experience to write about it—or, tragically, they’re unable to write at all. But in the last week we’ve enjoyed superb stories about the serious avalanche accident on Grand Mesa on March 17—from both the victim and his rescuer.

Seth Anderson and Ann Driggers climbed the northwest side of Grand Mesa, early that morning in mid-March. For several years, Anderson, a cofounder of the Grand Junction–based Loki apparel company, had dreamed of skiing the Thunderbird and Serpent formations on the steep walls overlooking Palisade. These bizarre slide paths play into Ute legends of deities living on Grand Mesa; Anderson had written before about these stories and his fascination with the formations. This winter’s heavy snows had covered the slides, making Anderson’s dream seem feasible.

The two skiers started down the Thunderbird near midday, and Anderson triggered a slide as he entered the Serpent gully. Although he was not completely buried, he was severely injured, with two badly broken legs. Fortunately, the two skiers were able to call for and help coordinate a rescue, and Anderson is now recovering.

It’s best to let Andesrson and Driggers speak for themselves. Last Friday, Anderson wrote a first-person story of this awful accident in the Grand Junction Free Press. And yesterday, Driggers published a powerful account of her perspective as companion and rescuer at her excellent Outdoor Junkie blog in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Both stories are unusually frank and moving. Recommended!

Bryan Wickenhauser (left) and Brian Smith celebrate their winning "reverse." Photo courtesy of Bryan Wickenhauser

Brian Smith and Bryan Wickenhauser won the 13th annual Elk Mountains Grand Traverse on Saturday in 6 hours 28 minutes and change. This backcountry ski race normally runs from Crested Butte to Aspen, but more than a foot of new snow and high winds forced organizers to scrub plans for the midnight start and high-altitude (over 12,000 feet) traverse to Aspen. Instead, racers did the “Grand Reverse,” starting at 6 a.m. and following a complex course up to the Friends Hut and back, doing several loops to add mileage, and finishing at the ski resort.

The course was so unfamiliar, in fact, that two of the leading teams took a wrong turn with about an hour left in the race and lost their podium finishes. In the final results, second place for the men went to Ethan Passant and Travis Scheefer, and the third spot went to Jake Jones and Pat O’Neill. Mark Smiley and Janelle Smiley won the co-ed division in 7:26:02. The fastest women’s team was Emma Catmur and Emma Lohr, in 9:05:45.

The Grand Reverse distance was approximately 38 miles and 7,000 feet of vertical, which is comparable to the usual course, but this year was much quicker. Top finishers glided in 1.5 to 3 hours faster than the winning times in recent years.

We asked winning skier Bryan Wickenhauser for his impressions.

Mojo: Like everyone, you must have been disappointed that conditions caused the course change. What did you think of the new course? Did it play any more to you and your partner’s strengths?

Wickenhauser: We were disappointed, but realistic. If those were the forecasted conditions for a training mission over to Aspen, we would not have gone, so they made the right call. I did do the other Grand Reverse [in 1999], and I bike and run those trails all summer, so we were comfortable with the route. The fact that we knew it well was good for us, but we knew many of the local teams knew it intimately as well. We certainly didn’t expect to win it just because we were familiar with the reroute.

Mojo: Were you allowed to change equipment with the course change, or did you carry the same kit?

Wickenhauser: You were allowed to change gear, but we stuck with our guns and used our rando/AT gear. Never did we waver on that call. We spend a lot of time in this gear, and it’s where our comfort level is at. In our minds, this is truly not a Nordic race. I have done the GT for 12 of the 13 years. The first eight were on Nordic-type gear. I really prefer the AT gear.

Mojo: Did you guys change tactics at all with the new course versus your plan for the normal route?

Wickenhauser: I think the main change was that we felt we could now go even harder and faster to the Friends Hut, due to the long downhill at the turnaround. It really allowed for some good recovery time on the downhill with this gear versus Nordic gear.

Mojo: What was the hardest part of the day?

Wickenhauser: Hardest part of the day was racing Jay Henry and Mike Kloser up Crested Butte resort the last 15 minutes, for what we thought was a fight for first place. Unbeknownst to us, they had taken a shortcut, so they ultimately got DQ’d. In our minds we could not let them win this race for a fourth straight time!

Jonathan Kriegel near the summit of Haystack Mountain. Northern La Sals in the background. Photo by Stan Wagon

The La Sal Mountains, just over the border in Utah, had nearly 150 percent of their average snowpack in mid-March, and that’s when Stan Wagon, a Summit County resident and avid ski mountaineer, headed toward Moab to sample the goods.

By Stan Wagon

On Friday, March 19, 2010, Jonathan Kriegel and I headed up the Geyser Pass Trail with large packs (55 pounds) to set up a camp for three nights at the pass. Conditions were stormy (and the drive up difficult in 6 inches of new snow), but the storm was ending and so it seemed perfect, with a forecast of sunny days and lots of fresh snow. We got to the pass in just over two hours and set up camp. We headed north for a short ski tour in the late afternoon but got a little lost on return, having to climb 200 feet to return to camp.

On Saturday we went for Haystack (11,640 ft.), which we failed on two years ago because of very firm snow and no crampons. This year, armed (footed?) with the proper tools, we easily cramponed up the steep east ridge and enjoyed some fine summit time. We could look down the large north face, which would have been skiable, but we stuck to our plan of skiing the south face.

Kriegel points out the pair's route on the beautiful north face of Mellenthin. Photo by Stan Wagon

The descent of the south face was not great—firm and uneven—and we had hopes for better on the north-facing slopes of Mellenthin (second-highest peak in the La Sals). In the afternoon we investigated the route to Mellenthin (12,645 ft.) and set a useful track to the base of the wonderful north face. Looking at things up close, it seemed like the left-hand ridge (the northeast ridge) would offer the best way to the summit, and there appeared to be a rock-free way down from the summit area to the center of the face we wanted to ski. Jonathan had skied this several years ago, in a lower snow year. Snow conditions this year were amazing, at 146 percent of normal….

Read the rest of this story at Summit County Citizens Voice. Click here to visit Stan Wagon’s website, where you’ll find more photos from this trip as well as dozens of Colorado ski descents.

Cold day at Hidden Valley, RMNP. Photo by Doug Schnitzspahn

By Dougald MacDonald

I’ve been wearing the Bombshell Jacket, the flagship waterproof-breathable shell from Backcountry.com’s new Stoic line, for much of this winter. And after months of backcountry skiing, mountaineering, and a bit of ice climbing, I’m definitely impressed.

At first, I wasn’t at all psyched with the jacket’s fit. At a trailhead in the Indian Peaks, as I pulled on the coat, my female skiing partner gave me that look I know oh-too-well from my wife—the look that says: “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” Don’t get me wrong: The jacket looks sharp. Mine is black with turquoise highlights, and the cut and detailing are fine. The problem is the super-trim fit around the waist, which would have looked great when I was a 145-pounder in college but looks and feels a bit snug as a 162-pounder (OK, 164-pounder).

I almost always wear a medium jacket, and the Bombshell fit me perfectly in the chest, shoulders, and arms; if I sized up, I think there would be too much fabric bunched around these areas. I grew to appreciate the trim cut on long ski tours and while climbing; the jacket fit great under a harness, for example. But it limits your options for layering. If you wear your jacket as a true shell, over multiple insulating layers, think about a larger size. If you wear the shell over light inner layers while moving and throw a puffy over the top when you stop, as I increasingly do, this fit might be perfect. If you’re just thinking about taking up ski touring to lose a few years of accumulated paunch, consider another coat.

Despite my quibbles about the fit, the Bombshell hits nearly every other note perfectly. The weight (about 1.5 pounds for the medium on my postage scale) is perfect for winter, providing a measure of insulation as well as full wind and water protection from the 3-layer, slightly stretchy fabric. Five clean and well-placed external pockets give ample storage options, without adding bulk, and there’s a slick media pocket inside. The jacket’s zips are super-smooth and easy to grab. The powder skirt zips out (which seems to help with the fit, by the way). The hood fits well over most helmets, with a short, stiff brim for visibility, and it has effective adjustments; it feels like there’s a bit too much extra fabric around the neck and chin when the hood is up and the front zip is down, but I appreciated the protection and comfort when I had to zip up completely while skinning into a ground blizzard in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Wrist gaiter.

The jacket seemed to breathe well, with mid-length pit zips; unfortunately, the Bombshell failed one of my standard shell-jacket tests, which is ease of use for pit zips. I like to be able to grab the zippers and open or shut the pit openings with gloves and pack on and with no yoga contortions; the Bombshell required too much stopping and fiddling to make adjustments—it seems like the zips are placed slightly too far toward the back. On the other hand, I loved the jacket’s elastic wrist gaiter / monkey paw thingambobs. Normally I feel like these just get in the way, but the Bombshell’s are so clean and unobtrusive that I slipped into the thumb hole and slid into my gloves more often than not, and they definitely kept my hands warmer and drier; when I wasn’t using the gaiters, they seemed to vanish. Thumbs up! (Or is that thumbs in?) Note that I have fairly small hands; guys with bigger mitts might find these cuffs constricting.

After a winter of fairly hard use, including several days of multiple close encounters with the pines on nearby ski hills, my final observation is that the jacket still looks like it just came out of the box. I suspect the Bombshell will last for years, and that makes the quite reasonable $259 retail price look even better. Plus, right now you can get the jacket in most sizes and colors for $181.30 (30 percent off) at Backcountry.com. That’s a steal.

Crested Butte hosted the 14th U.S. Telemark Extreme Freeskiing Championships last weekend, with 62 free-heelers competing in six divisions. A snowy day on the Headwall gave good conditions but caused one men’s run to be canceled. On Saturday, the action moved to Sock-it-to-Me Ridge on a cold, clear day. Sydney Fuller took the adult women’s crown, and Mark Robbins topped the podium for the men. Read a first-person account by Candace Horgan at Westword, check the results at Telemark Skier, or watch this video from Day 2:

By Rob Coppolillo

More than a year has passed since we began itching for a look at Backcountry Access’ newest beacon, the three-antenna Tracker2 ($335). Production delays kept us guessing, but the gang at BCA said it was all to get the new Tracker2 just right—and for the most part they’ve done just that.

BCA introduced the first two-antenna beacon, the Tracker, more than a decade ago (still available for $290). Suddenly, avalanche transceivers were easier to use and more accurate when searching for burial victims. European manufacturers followed suit, launching two-antenna beacons of their own and kicking off an arms race to see who’d develop the first three-antenna model. Turns out the Euros, like Ortovox, Pieps, and Barryvox, beat BCA to the punch, but that certainly doesn’t mean anybody’s been KO’d.

Why does anybody need three antennae, you might ask? Three is better than two because they make beacons easier to use and more accurate when searching for a buried transceiver. Without getting too geeked out, the three-antennae models give more accurate information, especially with a deep burial and when “pinpoint” searching just before probing and digging. Bottom line is you want your buddies using a three-antenna rig if you’re buried beneath the snow and counting the seconds.

I got antsy back in the ’08-’09 season and purchased a Euro beacon with three antennae and every feature imaginable, including a “marking” function and an LCD display showing where beacons are buried around you. Slick and beautiful, right? Not so fast—that unit has since been returned due to glitches and a general bitchiness in the field. While the Euros launched their products sooner, that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better.

Speed Counts

I recently used the Tracker2 for seven days in the backcountry, including a couple of hours devoted specifically to rescue scenarios, in and around the Whitecap hut in British Columbia. Before that, I used the original Tracker for six years.

One of the chief strengths of BCA’s Tracker and Tracker2 is speed. When the beacon receives a signal, it presents the info immediately in the form of a distance reading (in meters) and a direction (indicator arrows). The processor spends less than a second digesting the signal strength of the buried beacon (your poor, under-oxygenated buddy) and tells you where to go and how far you’ve got to get there. The fancier Euro models, the Ortovox S1 and Barryvox Pulse in particular, spend time processing the signal and saving it. The BCA Tracker2 is the fastest beacon you’ll use, period, which is a major advantage.

One reason I returned the above-mentioned $500 unit was its habit of giving me the “stop-and-wait” icon during multiple-beacon searches—two or more beacons buried. While other three-antennae beacons become overwhelmed with info during multiple-burial searches, the Tracker2 did not freeze up.

Courtesy of Backcountry Access

On Your Mark…

Now a potential downside. Tracker2 maintains its superior processing speed in part by doing less—it won’t count signals for you or “mark” them. (It does, however, have a simple light that indicates multiple burials.) Marking allows you to disregard a beacon signal once you’ve located the device. Imagine you have two friends buried in a slide. You begin searching, locate your first buddy, probe and strike him, and now you want to have another friend start digging while you search for the second victim. With a marking function—something the Ortovox S1 does flawlessly; the Barryvox does well; and the Pieps DSP does spottily (though firmware upgrades may help)—you simply “mark” the beacon you’ve found, and now your own beacon will ignore that signal and focus on the lone signal of your second victim. This simplifies searches and can make a live retrieval more likely in the event of a buried group.

Avalanche educator and IFMGA guide Colin Zacharias, with whom I skied in British Columbia, believes the marking function is critical. “The Tracker2 is a great beacon for a client,” says Zacharias. “But it doesn’t have a marking function, so for the average recreationalist to use it he has to learn multiple search techniques to deal with multiple burials.”

Zacharias’ point is that, since the Tracker2 doesn’t allow you to mark beacons as you locate them, you’re left with a ton of information to manage. The folks at BCA say their research indicates most multiple-burial scenarios can be dealt with as a series of single-beacon searches; that is, you simply find one beacon and move on to the next using a specialized version of searching called the “micro-strip” method (visit the BCA site for specifics). This is a topic of considerable controversy, but basically BCA believes the reliability of the Tracker2, when used with well-practiced search techniques, makes it more effective.

Having used the two most popular European three-antenna beacons (Ortovox and Barryvox) and the Tracker2, at this point I have to say I agree with the BCA folks. Why? It goes back to the processors in the beacons. I found, over the course of several months, that the feature-heavy beacons bogged down with multiple burials and functioned less effectively in the cold (low voltage issues?).

I know I’ll get hammered for this, but my belief at this point is that a well-practiced user with the BCA Tracker2 will find beacons, even multiple burials, more quickly than with a fancier model. I simply had too many practice sessions in which the Euro beacons gave me the “stop and wait” icons (indicating their processors were overloaded), while the Tracker2 never seized, and if one adheres to proper search techniques, allows the searcher to keep moving and keep locating bodies.

On Display

There’s also great debate regarding the interface of avy beacons. The Tracker2 looks nearly identical to its ancestor, the Tracker, giving direction arrows and a distance reading. Nice if you’re already accustomed to using a BCA beacon. The only new feature is its “multiple burial” indicator light. The light tells its user if the transceiver is receiving more than one signal by staying illuminated without interruption. It two of those signals are within a 5m radius of the unit, the light then flashes. Simple and easy, but one has to know the beacon to use this info.

The Ortovox and Barryvox manage multiples differently. These units count beacons up to four, telling users exactly how many beacons are buried—a nice feature and one that worked reliably on both units when I tested them. This is a definite advantage over the Tracker2, but again, it comes at a price in processing speed. More than four beacons and these models simply indicate “4+”—then you know you’ve got your work cut out for you.

In general, people adapt to the beacon they’re using, so I’m not sure if the interface is critical in choosing a beacon. Whatever beacon a person uses, she or he must-must-must practice with it and be totally familiar with its functions and display. When using the Tracker2, for example, one must recognize when the multiple-burial light comes on and what to do if it’s flashing. (Flashing, again, means two beacons are buried with a 5m radius of the searcher.) In a close-proximity burial such as this, the searcher must adapt his technique to this situation. Again, the BCA website provides specific details on search techniques.

The Future

Before I declare the BCA the end-all beacon, I must say this: The design of the Ortovox S1 (Ortovox.com, $500) is likely where the industry’s headed. Once the S1 processor catches up in terms of speed and reliability, it will be a superior unit. The LCD screen shows where beacons are buried in the slide path (users see a direction arrow as well as little bodies located in space—the most intuitive display of any beacon made); the beacon allows you to mark, and it pinpoint-searches accurately. When it functions effectively—and that’s a major caveat—it makes a three-beacon burial relatively simple. The problem remains in its inability to process all the data it wants to. In essence, the S1 bites off more than it can chew…for now.

Meanwhile, the Tracker2 is a great beacon, and at this point it’s the best bang for the buck for most people, in my opinion. And with dedicated practice, a user can confidently handle the less-common case of multiple burials. No matter which beacon a backcountry enthusiast uses, she or he must study its functions, learn the appropriate search techniques for that beacon, and practice, practice, practice. Check the BCA site for a list of “beacon parks,” so you can get some practice time in before resorts close for the year. Good luck!