Winter ski trip to Conundrum Hot Springs
Contributed by tom. April 1999.
Activity: Nordic skiing
Location: Crested Butte
Other weekend plans failing, Mike, Scott, and I decided to ski out to Conundrum Hot Springs. We met Friday night at Il Vicino to make plans. After deciding what to take, we left Salida Saturday at 0600.
The plan was to drive out to Crested Butte, go to The Alpineer store to pick up a few items (I needed a shovel, and we all needed avalanche beacons), then drive as far towards the town of Gothic as possible, ski over the Triangle Pass and down to the springs. Spend the night soaking, and return on Sunday.
Saturday
I got up at 0445, finished packing my gear, made bacon with eggs-over-easy, took advantage of the time difference to make an international call, and packed the car. At 0545 I was at Scott's house, and then we picked up Mike. The drive to Crested Butte was uneventful, other than my practicing my driving on snow. After my recent car-totaling accident I felt a bit anxious, but we had no problems.
We reached Gunnison before 0800 and stopped the Cattlemens' Association for breakfast. I'd recommend The Foreman (steak and eggs). Since a few stores were already open, we scoped them to see if we could get things cheaper than in Crested Butte. But the stores didn't have what we wanted, and so we pressed on.
The Alpineer (419 6th Street, Crested Butte, (800)223-4655)
had the avalanche report for the day, and we picked up a few topo maps,
I got a shovel, and we all rented avalanche beacons. Although neither
Scott nor I have used the Tracker before, the store only had one PEEP
left and it made sense for all of us to have the same equipment. It
turned out that the road towards Gothic was closed, so we had an extra 3
miles to reach the trailhead.
We went as far as we could, changed clothes, strapped on our skis (Mike: Rotefella XC, Scott: Black Diamond with Rivas, I: TUA's with Voile releasables), waxed or skinned up, and started towards Gothic just past 1100. The weather was nice, a little wind, a lot of sun, and just below freezing. The first 3 miles were pretty mellow -- a little downhill, but hardly enough to actually glide down on skins. To our right the land dropped down to a river, which meandered in fantastic patterns. Many of the river bends went 270 degrees, before righting themselves and turning just as much the other way.
In Gothic, around 1230, we had some quick food and headed up to the
actual trailhead. It seemed rather unlikely that we would reach the hot
springs by the end of the day, and we probably wouldn't want to risk the
traverse towards Triangle Pass anyway. From the map it seemed like a
mile-long traverse up a ridge with lots of avalanche possibilities. We
tentatively decided to ski up to the beginning of the traverse, sleep in
a safe spot, and go over to the springs around sunrise, when the snow
was still strong.
Later on, while waiting for Scott to re-wax his skis, Mike and I practiced using the beacons. I buried my beacon, and Mike used the line-of-induction method to find it. Most of what I learned in the avalanche course was still fresh in my head, and I tried to pass as much of it as possible to Mike. Scott soon reached us, and we continued.
The trail was fairly straightforward, and we had no trouble following
it even without any ski tracks. With only a few inches of loose snow
breaking trail wasn't too tiring either. We broke for a late lunch, had
kielbasa, cheese, and bread. Then my right binding broke -- the
mid-step plate that holds the releasable part of the binding loosened
up, and it kept falling out of the fixed binding. I couldn't really ski
that way, but fortunately Scott, being an industrial artist, fixed it.
He noticed that two of the screws were not firmly attached, and kept
coming up, loosening just enough for my foot place to slide too far
back. We ended up removing the bottom plate with the ski break and
attaching the upper binding part directly onto the ski. It worked! I
was able to finish the trip, although the binding released a lot.
We kept on and on, and decided to set camp just before Copper Lake. We hoped to be near a stream, but also wanted to be all done by sundown. Mike and Scott shared a tent, and I dug a snow half-pit half-cave, and slept there in my bivy sack. For dinner, after melting snow for 2 liters of water, we had top-ramen with pre-chopped onions, serrano chilies, dried tomatoes, garlic, and eggs. Quite nutritious, followed by a bottle of port which Scott carried in a water bottle, as we sat by the fire. As the fire started petering out we went to sleep.
Sunday
The night was fairly cold, as Mike and Scott put it: "down to the single digits, right around 13". I slept fairly well, better than could be expected. My Polish sleeping bag passed the test again, although I still find the hood design to be lacking. But with a fleece hat it worked fine. We had a quick breakfast, mostly the same as for dinner, and melted some more water. Our feet were freezing in the plastic boots, and as soon as the sun was higher in the sky we dug out a few small pits, laid our thermarests in them and enjoyed the warmth. But the sun soon became too strong, and Mike and I, followed later by Scott, headed out to the base of the traverse. We got there within 15-20 minutes, and agreed that it would have been, at least moderatly, risky to do. It seemed like there was well over one or two dozen avalanche chutes that we would have to traverse, over a mile of 35-40 degree slope. Perfect avalanche conditions, especially with a snowfall 5-6 days before.
We appreciated the view of the Triangle Pass (13,500) for a few
minutes, I took off my skins, and we flew back to camp, meeting Scott
along the way. The trail was a bit boring, so we headed down through
the trees, with more-or-less telemark turns in untracked snow. It was
so much fun that we missed the camp turnoff, and had to hike a quarter
mile back.
We were basically packed, and headed down towards Gothic. Even with the few stream crossings the return leg seemed very fast. We flew down to town, I flew even more since my bindings released fairly often and I got to eat some snow.
I had a major fall on the way down: I was skiing down the trail, at a point where the trail was some 5m wide) doing tele turns with a full pack, suddenly there was a dip, I skied through it in parallel, then started tipping forward... and forward... and forward.... First my left ski (the one with the super releasable binding) came off, then I was going sideways, then the right ski unclipped, throwing me into a I skid on my belly with the pack on my head. The fall was fairly brutal -- it bent out my ski stop by 180 degrees! I bent it back, picked up my skis, and was standing towards the middle of the trail putting my skis back on, when my comrades skied past me howling :) The middle was the only place flat enough for me to clip back in, and I didn't think that they were to near by!
From Gothic to the car the way was very tiring -- ever so slightly but seemingly always, uphill. The three miles seemed to take us a long time, especially after the 6 miles that we skis down in probably less than an hour. Each bend seemed like it would be the last one but, after reaching it, we could see the trail winding to another turn far away.
After reaching the car (1600's) we packed it, had the pineapple juice that Mike so thoughtfully brought, some chocolate, and drove down to Crested Butte for an elk burger and a beer. The brewery was out of elk, so we settled for beef. The ESB was excellent, and soon afterwards we drove back to Salida, and were home before dark.