A Saturday Morning on the Cristo

Despite being one of the easiest 14ers in the state and one we have been up and down countless times, its hard to beat Quandary’s south facing Cristo Couloir in terms of bang (ski descent) for your buck (effort & time involved). Mikey & Kaitlin came up Friday night and stayed with us as Kaitlin would care for Sawyer and Rainie while Kona, Kristine, Mikey, & myself would go climb & ski the Cristo. Its a great route – very direct and a fun ski. One I try and do about every spring. After Sawyer ate a good breakfast and got accustomed to Kaitlin, we departed the house by 8am for the 1 hour and 15 min drive over to Quandary. We had to park at the gate to the Blue Lakes Dam as is typical and got going around 9:30am from my truck for the mile walk up the road to the dam and the base of the couloir. From here its 1 mile and 2,575′ straight up to the summit. Navigationally, it cannot get any easier than this. A great bootpack was established and up we went.

We topped out right about noon to several folks coming up the standard east ridge and some pretty blustery west wind.

After maybe 20 minutes on the summit, it was time to roll. We quickly transitioned to ski mode and started down the Cristo. The sun was in and out of the clouds all day, which tended to crust over some of the snow on the upper slopes, but overall it was a pretty decent ski down albeit a bit heavy since we were skiing it after noon this day.

About halfway down the couloir, the sun was really out and it was pretty sloppy, heavy snow especially on my teles. Mikey seemed to carve it up like butter on his snowboard. Kristine skied it very well on her alpines.

And, a few of me that Kristine took.

Back at the car around 1pm, we were home by 2:30pm after giving a few fellow skiers a ride back to the standard east ridge trailhead (which they had ascended to ski down the Cristo). Kaitlin & Sawyer had had a great day together and she had just awoken from her afternoon slumber. Many thanks to Kaitlin for shouldering our responsibilities for a few hours so we could go climb/ski something together.

Lastly, happy 9th birthday to Kona! Her birthday is today (May 17). She is the best companion we could have ever asked for. We all love you so much, Kona!