Monte Cristo Direct 2/5

It had been almost a week since I had last gone skiing. Sickness had me staying on the couch all throughout the weekend and the beginning of this week. I was itching to get out for another adventure and to enjoy all of this fresh new snow. Finally I felt good enough to get out and explore a bit yesterday morning, despite the cold and windy conditions.

With all this built up energy for adventure, Koby and I set our sights on getting after Monte Cristo Dirrectissimo. We pulled all the gear the night before, and then logged a few hours of sleep before setting out early to get on the trail.

The line

It has been pretty interesting seeing all of the traffic heading up Mt Superior these last few days since the snowfall. For this reason I've always called it the Mt Superior Highway, but I really enjoyed another person’s comments on it yesterday, in which you have to go through downtown Los Angeles to get to Superior. None-the-less we were happy to have a well established skin track and booter the entire way up.

We battled through the strong winds throughout the ridge and made it to the summit of Superior in less than 3 hours. Our line drops Southwest, while all the other traffic drops southeast to the classic south face descent. We were very tempted to ski the headwall, where one can get the classic ‘end of the world photograph, but thought that it was best to save that for another day. There was low risk of anything sliding but if anything did go it would be very high consequence.

It was a windy one

As we were getting ready to drop, I heard something funny coming from behind me and looked over to see a slide carrying two members of another party down a north facing slope of Monte Cristo into Mill B South. We had been watching these two ascend the slope for some time now, and were relieved to see the two of them pop to the surface when the slide settled. One had pulled his airbag but still got partially buried. A few yells down to them, and we confirmed they were ok and didn’t need any assistance. Still a bit of a scare to see something like happen so close to you. A further reminder to stay safe out there and always travel at a safe distance from each other in avalanche terrain.

PC: Random dude atop superior, post-slide

We put our sights back on the run in front of us. The psych was high. I dropped first and enjoyed about a thousand feet of thigh deep powder getting to the anchor, howling at every turn. The snow was so light and there was plenty of it. There had been one other to ski this way, and whoever that was cut out the Monte Cristo Gully. More than two-thirds of this decent was untracked..

I inched up and clipped in to the anchor, some old nuts and a peton on the skiers right side of the couloir. I hear that sometimes this first rappel can be avoided with a deeper snowpack but I’ve never seen it that filled in. Koby came in and followed up to the anchor while I got the rope out and started setting it up. The first rappel was only about 15 meters, leading to a snowfield that has a slung tree on the right hand side. I went first since I had done the line before and knew where the next anchor was. The next rappel was about 30 meters and took about the full length of the rope.

We made it through both rappels quickly and found ourselves in front of even more fresh snow. The snow got a bit heavier near the bottom, as expected, but still plenty deep and a lot of fun. As I was cruising to the end of the run I had to make a quick stop, avoiding a 40-50 foot waterfall drop off, blocking us and the road. We had to backtrack a little bit and make our way up the walls of the couloir to exit.

I still can’t get over how much fun this morning was. It was the most snow I’ve skied all season so far, and to do it on such an awesome run just added to the overall experience. Days like this just show me how much fun backcountry skiing is, and reaffirm why I love the activity so much. 

GH