Some Memorable Ski Trips

There are many who find in the combination of skiing and mountaineering the finest of all sports, for whom no ski tour is perfect unless it includes the ascent of some big peak, or traverse of some great glacier pass, and also yields the ski-runner the unfettered joy of a perfect unhampered run down some great glacier. It is not merely skiing, it is not merely scenery that draws us to the glaciers on skis. It is rather the knowledge that the skiing motion seems to lend a new significance to mountain beauty, so that the impressions gained in some run down a glacier highway are deeper, more vivid and more enduring than those which reward the man on foot.

- Sir Arnold Lunn: Alpine Skiing At All Heights and Seasons (1921)

On the famous Sierra High Route, CA
© 1986 by George I. Bell

Here are some enjoyable backcountry ski trips I have done. They are in chronological order. Some of them include links to a trip report.

Mt. Whitney (first telemark turns), California, April 1984
Matterhorn Peak (4 days of perfect corn snow), California, 1985
Winter ascent of Bear Creek Spire (4 day trip), California, 1986
Sierra High Route, California (6 days) 1986
Ski around the Palisaides (6 days), California, 1988
Ruby Mountains (5 days), Nevada, 1988
Ski descent of Mt. Shasta (from just below the summit, via Wintun Ridge), 1989
Bernina-Bergell Traverse, Switzerland (7 days), 1990
Commando Run (Vail Pass to Vail, three times), Colorado, 1993, 94, 95
Ski descents of Middle Sister, Diamond Peak, Mount St. Helens, Oregon, 1995
Colorado ski descents, from 1997 onward:
- Quandary Peak, South Face (Cristo Couloir), 1997
- Buffalo Mt (near Silverthorne), ENE (Silver) Couloir, 1997
- Torreys Peak, NE Face, 1997
- James Peak, Starlight Couloir, 1998
- Mt. Audubon, Crooked Couloir, 1999
- Mt. Toll, SE Face, 2000
- Sundance Bowl (off Trail Ridge Road), 2001
- Mt. Sniktau, 2003
- Longs Peak (2003)
- Snow Lion, Jasper Peak, 2003
- North Star Couloir, North Arapahoe Peak, 2004

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George Bell (gibell@comcast.net)