Colorado Ski Descents
Sayres-Benchmark X-Rated Couloir
Ski Descent of the X-Rated Couloir May 31st 2024
After a wonderful day on the Boudoir Couloir of Horseshoe Mountain, we headed south to our bigger objective. Jeff was about to move and fly to kilimanjaro, and Ty was also about to move and go through his finals (some proper DU bs). Busy times for them! But for me I had a long weekend to spend with some friends in the BV area.
Sayres is such an incredible looking mountain. Perfectly pyramidal, an unusual amount of snow for this part of the sawatch, and massive prominance when framed by the picturesque valley. Getting out here was a slog and a half. An easy approach in trail runners evaporated when we hit about 10,600 feet. Deep, unsupportable snow that was too inconsistant to skin slowed us down greatly. After about 40 minutes of suffering, we hit consistant enough snow to skin (with plenty of dirt in places). This allowed us to pick up the pace and zoom over to the base.
The grand central couloir is remarkibly unremarkable. Just a big honkin 35-40 degree couloir. It is nothing if not bootable. The sun decided to become a giant lazer so we were absolutely cooking as soon as we started booting. Slowly, but surely we made it up. Despite how hot we were, the snow had yet to warm up enough to satisfaction. To kill a bit of time Ty and I ran over to the unnamed(?) subpeak of Sayres just to the west. From there it looked like there were some crazy sweet freeride lines someone needs to ski!
Things were not really getting better, and in the interest of getting out before the basin became a post-hole-hell, we decided to ski a little bit of ice. Sadly, the proper enterance to the couloir was think and rocky, so we dropped to the NW facing enterence about 50 feet down from the summit. The NW aspect was awful -- icy and even some pentients forming. But as soon as we got into the gut and transisitoned to the N, NE facing aspect, the snow became delightfully edgable.
Overall it skiied super well! Ty and I were able to ski all the way until where we stashed our shoes around 11,100. Jeff's unwaxed skis (don't worry he'll do it next season) forced him to throw on skins, but the speed we could go was roughly the same due to how flat the basin is. I skied and Ty and Jeff skinned to around 10,800, where we sucked it up and postholed until around 10,400 where there was much less snow. From there it was easy crusing back to the car! Another beautiful 13er in the sawatch done!