Adventure skiing through Coalpit Headwall/ Coalpit Gulch 3/24

Two hours into the morning I thought Brett and I had made a mistake in even coming out this way. The last two hours we spent wandering in circles throughout Hogum Fork, trying desperately to find the way and had barely made any progress. Sinking into every post hole and battling thick brush, I wished I was back at home sleeping or eating a nice breakfast. Anything but trekking through this shit. Although I had just come up here about a week ago and everything went smoothly, for some reason I couldn't seem to find the 'trail'. About 2 and a half hours in we threw the skins on and it started to go much more smoothly from here. We reached the base of the needle in a little over 4 hours and threw the skis on the pack shortly after. Luckily for us, some much faster skiers passed us and made the booter uphill. It was like walking up a staircase for 2,000+ feet, pretty simple.

Making out way up the apron of the needle, thanks for the booter!

Nice backdrop of the NW couloir of the Pfiefferhorn

Looking down on our run, psyched!

Topping out the chute a little after 9, we enjoyed the already warm sunshine and had some conversations with the other party before they dropped into the needle. We switched to ski mode and made our way over to the top of Coalpit Headwall. It was looking good! 5,000 feet of great skiing lay between us and the road. The snow was still sheltered on the North aspect and it made for some great turns. I dropped first and hollered my way down the headwall. Brett followed and enjoyed the same great snow I just got down from. The two of us made our way into the winding couloir section of our run, Coalpit Gulch. It winded it's way through a gully, until it cliffed out above a waterfall. It was a pretty exposed scramble on some dirt and brush to get to the anchor. Getting through that, we set up the anchor and rappelled alongside the falls. From here we made a few more small downclimbs and exited the gulch right where the rock climb pentapitch starts.

Brett getting in some turns on the lower headwall

So psyched!

Making our way through the gulch

Still psyched!

Hey, there's no more snow

An exposed move to the anchor to spice things up

Brett finishing up the rappel

A bit scrambly of an exit

We ran/stumbled through the screefield and across the river in order to get to work on time (we ended up making it). It was adventure skiing at it's finest. We had some great snow up on the epic headwall section, halfpipe skiing down the gulch, and some sketchy piecing together through the bottom. What a sweet line.

GH