TRIP REPORTS: SKIING THE ANGEL OF SHAVANO

The Plan

Our plan for this climb was simple: climb to the top of the Angel of Shavano and ski down several thousand feet of fresh snow. If time permitted, we also hoped to summit Mt. Shavano (14,229ft). The climbing party consisted of five people: Myself, Eric (a friend of mine and fellow Brute, Stephanie and Fritjof (friends of Eric and members of the Special Idiots ultra-running group), and Prakash, a member of 14ers.com (I think that he knew some of the others as well).

The Climb

We started hiking on the Colorado Trail a few minutes before 7AM (an hour and a half later than we had originally planned). The sun was up, but the sky was cloudy and dark, and it was snowing. For the next few hours, blue skies appeared, disappeared and reappeared with intermittent snow flurries. After hiking for two miles, we left the Colorado Trail and made our way up the beginning of the Mt. Shavano Trail. It didn’t take long before our postholing reached the point where it became more efficient to skin up the trail. With no clear trail to follow, we skinned up a long drainage until we reached treeline. From here, we followed the edge of the Angel of Shavano until it became too steep to skin. The snow was consolidated and avalanche danger was low. We strapped our skis onto our packs and climbed up the final 500 vertical feet of the Angel. The main snowfield ran out at 13,200ft, where we took a short break, ate some food and stashed our packs and skis. The brief rest prepared us for the final push to the summit.

The Descent

Upon reaching the summit, we made a rapid downclimb to our gear stash, and threw on our skis for a quick descent. For a number of reasons, the ski descent took much, much longer that I had anticipated. However, when we were skiing, the snow was incredible. Several inches of fresh powder had accumulated throughout the day. After we reached treeline, we spent the next few hours navigating the drainage and skiing through the forest. Somehow, we had failed to follow the same drainage down (that we took up), and had to spend some extra time navigating our way back to the Mt. Shavano Trail. We ended up running into the trail not too far away from the junction with the Colorado Trail.

Despite our exhaustion, Eric and I raced down the last two miles of the trail in search of food, water and relief from our ski boots. When we arrived at the cars, I immediately threw all of my gear in the back of my truck and headed to Poncha Springs for the first sign of food and water. It was a long and tiring day. In total, we climbed and descended over 5,100 vertical feet over the course of ten miles.