Crew: Ryan DeVesty, Evan Pescatore, Sal Martelli, Matt Arentsen
Distance: The State of Colorado
Summits: 5
Elevation Gain and loss: to much to count
Completion time: 7 days
The Start of it all. Denver Colorado on our way to Arapahoe Basin Ski & Snowboard Area. The first of 5 mountains we plan on riding within the next 7 days.
Abasin's summit 11,000 ft. This gives you 2,270 ft of vertical skiing area.
Next stop on the Colorado tour Silverton Mt. in the San Juan Mountains. This Mountain rage is extremely rugged and located in the southwestern part of Colorado. Its an old mining town surrounded by 14,000ft mountains as far as you can see. What you see in the picture below is Silverton's base camp resort. In this tent you sign your life away to go ride the lines of your life!
In the picture above you see people waiting on line for the rentals which were handed out in that school bus buried in 9 ft of snow. You also can see the Heli in the background which for a small fee you can be dropped on any of these peaks below and more. This place was the real deal. I had never seen or ridden anything like it up to this point. These slopes were only for experts! The pitch was anywhere from 40 to 50 degrees.
Hiking was a big part of the day. You would take the super sketchy 2 person chair lift from 10,000ft to 12,000ft then hike up depending on your riding level. The summit was about a 45 minute hike from the lift which topped you off at 13,500ft of elevation. The air was thinner up there and made everything more difficult. Once you picked your line you would stop hiking take a 10 minute break and descend the ride of your life!
If you look close directly in the center of the picture below you will see the Heli dropping our friend Sal off on that peak. This was our second day at Silverton Mt. and we all decided to go Heli Boarding. The Trip just kept getting better and better. What an EPIC mountain.
After our totally mental Heli drop we decided to take a monster hike to the summit and find some gnarly chute to drop into. These hikes were taxing on our legs and just straight scary at times where you knew that if you fell over the rocks it wasn't gonna be good. Just take a look at the photo below. One step to the right is a free fall to a most certain death. At the same time, looking out at the mountains in the distance gave you a view of a life time.
Ouray Colorado: Home of the Craziest Ice Climbing I've ever seen. These guys and girls were ice picking their hearts out on 300ft ice waterfalls. We happened to be just passing through on our way to Aspen, so we stopped for a few photos.
In the picture below I captured a guy tight roping over this monster gorge as ice climbers below him are making their way to the top. I mean c'mon, really people?
Aspen Snowmass Resort and Ski area and our 3rd mountain on the list. This mountain has to be one of the largest as far as ski able acres in the country. It snowed like 6 inches over night so we got pretty ridiculous conditions all day. As it continued to snow all day and into the night.
As you can see we got puked on all night with snow accumulating about a foot or more. We really couldn't have asked for better conditions the whole time we were there. It was either blue bird perfection or snowing which both were fine with me.
So we were off to Aspen Mt for a morning of ridding fresh pow pow in the glades. We only road Aspen for the morning hours getting about 3 runs in before heading to Highlands for the remainder of the day.
Highlands and the famous Highlands Bowl! So at this point I thought we had road the most difficult and demanding terrain at Silverton Mt. I quickly found out I was wrong. 2 lifts later and we were standing at 10,000ft elevation and in for an hour hike up to Highland Bowl at 12,300 ft.
The summit at Highland Bowl was Spectacular. We decided to ride "G8" down the Bowl which was the longest most technical decent. What a ride it was and what a trip! This one was for the record books! Trying to make the Silverton Heli a once a year thing!
