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Turkey Chute Ski Descent
Ski descent of Silverton's Mt. Hazelton Turkey Chute, October 27th 2024
After scoring the first turns of the season in Silverton the prior weekend 🎉 (in a little couloir no less!!), I was right back in ski adventure mode. With an isothermal snowpack, my eyes were on the prizes of the San Juans. The Turkey chute has a reputation for early season success, and I knew that the N facing loaded areas would be DEEP. We only had Sunday, so unfortunately, it was a strike mission. It was 12 hours of driving for about 30 minutes of skiing, worth it!! We all packed into Christian's Taco and made the long, long drive to Eureka.
Upon closer inspection through my $40,000 dollar telescope (thanks mines!), the couloir was in!! The apron was filled with sharks, but there was enough coverage to skin from the car!
It didn't take long to get to the base of the line, and the whole day was under 3 miles! I think I'm beginning to really like these San Juan Mountains... As soon as we got into the base of the line the coverage went from 8 inches of corn to 2-3 feet of powder. The gamble paid off! And so the first booter of the season began.
Oh how I missed this!! The walls towered 500 feet above us as we pushed on through the crux. The snow ranged from wet to dry powder and to chalky windboard. The booter was indecisively switching between not-at-all supportive to perfect steps.
And eventually we made it! The couloir looked sweet with a good 1000 feet of solid coverage. The top was fast and chalky, before giving into a bit heavy wind affected pow. But holy shit it was a couloir in October!! It's gonna be hard to go back to low angle pow once the Colorado P-slab sets in...
It wasn't any of our finest turns, but it feels good to get 51 degree turns in the books in October! Skiing at elevation reminded me I need to go train at the resort because my legs were cooked!! Maybe this cross training thing people talk about has some truth in it...
The way out was certainley something -- adventure skiing at it's finest! We gracfully danced around the rocks and somehow (miraculously) none of us got core shots!!! Thanks Ullr. As I'm writing this the next storm is finishing up and we are working on grabbing as many early season couloirs as we can before it gets unsafe! Thanks SJ mountains!!! Keep on doing your snow dances we are doing something right!