[TR] Capitol Hill - West Face - Denny Couloir 12/21/2008

[SlickWilly]

Trip: Capitol Hill - West Face - Denny Couloir

 

Date: 12/21/2008

 

Trip Report:

This couloir rarely comes into condition, so we ignored the newscasters' instructions to "hunker down" and jumped at the chance to ski it.

 

The approach was pretty mellow - we made a traverse across 14th where we would drop in to the couloir.

 

On the traverse:

 

 

 

The top part of the couloir is low angle and good, fun cruising:

 

 

Red light - approaching the goods:

 

 

Waiting for my turn to drop in:

 

 

Shredding the goods:

 

 

 

My partner kept choking on the deep, dry, fluffy pow and was glad she brought her Avalung:

 

 

The couloir has kind of a sketchy runout (traffic on Stewart), so we stopped just short of the end:

 

 

Putting the skins on for the climb back up:

 

 

Climbing back up:

 

 

 

 

Skis > Cadillac:

 

 

My posse's on Broadway:

 

 

We took the direct route through Cal Anderson to get back home, encountering some strange mountain adventurers:

 

 

Gear Notes:

Skis, skins, poles.

 

Approach Notes:

Good skinning, the track is well established. Watch out for cars, drunken sledders, and melted out manhole covers.

[Braydon]

lol...nice

[Alex]

OMG you beat Sky to a FIRST DESCENT! Ski sickness!!

[mzchristy]

Nice work!! I am sure Sky will be jealous of this fine assault.

[Bug]

Any trouble with Snaffles?

[Cobra_Commander]

some of the sickest runs in the region are skiers right, in the gladed hipsters. Hopefully the hipsters are starting to get buried as the base solidifies finally.

[DirtyHarry]

Just try not to catch on edge on their half buried fixies though.

[G-spotter]

All that terrain and no jibbin?

[TRbetaFlash]

Quite nice. Indeed I am jealous. I was one of those real lucky folks that got the shaft at SeaTac on the 21st during that last snow storm. All I wanted to do once I got home was to rally down to The great South Face of Queen Anne for a rowdy snowboard descent. This is reminiscent of old days in Bellingham on Alabama hill. Someone caught us on tape.

 

 

so you just went to the bottom without incident? It would have been more interesting if you had gone down into the guard rail, threatening all of I-5 as you loomed above. wait a sec..

[olyclimber]

did the second descent today on rollerblades wearing neon spandex and a mesh half shirt. it wasn't all of that.

[TRbetaFlash]

lol. yr avatar.