Home
The Pearl Couloir
Cathedral Peak Ski Descent, May 25th 2024
In the wake of graduation and a fat snow year I kept finding myself deeper in the mountains! Bucket list items were coming day after day. The Pearl couloir is lesser known compared to some of the prominent Elk lines but is one of the most beautiful, aesthetic lines I have skied.
By the 25th the snow line had increased to around 10.5 in the Elks, not bad! The approach to Cathedral is an average day and a big avy debris pile made crossing the river easy giving us an easy skin all the way to the base of the line. On the way up we spotted this beautiful little exit couloir we'd take on the way out!
After a little bit of contrived skinning to get past the cliff bands at 11,500, the beautiful NE face of cathedral revealed itself. Looking good! Pearl is the major line dropping from the summit and Black Pearl is the super narrow line one to the right. The rest are all skiable but unnamed AFAIK.
Upon closer inspection, we say another group going up Black Pearl. The weather was strange, cloudy, windy, and cold, and we were not sure how the snow would warm or if it would start cooking if the wind died down. We decided to make haste and started cooking up the line. Super aesthetic!
The couloir is pretty low angle for the first half but you're always staring at a monsterous cornice. Not a lot of safe zones!
The snow was pretty solid a nice couple inches of soft wind-pow that was heating pretty slowly. A bit of fresh snow was falling and the temperatures were cold enough to prevent too much greenhousing.
We wen't as high as we could until the awful elk choss started appearing. No 4th class choss in ski boots for me! I think that the people who summit this way are crazy! Dawson-perlmutter is a lot better would strongly recommend that. The upper half of the couloir is considerably steeper than the lower half and the first couple turns were pretty puckering!
Nothing like powder in late May! I would later tragically discover that June 5th would be the last refreeze and good skiing of the season, but the month of May was incredible!
