Grays Peak 4-5-2008 - An 18 Pic TR

**Ireallyliketoski2** · 04-08-2008, 11:50 AM

It's 4:15am and I see climb2ski pulling into the driveway. I walk out to greet him and he prepares to step out of the Jeep. As he steps out, the Jeep starts rolling backwards, and he has one foot in the car and one foot on the driveway.

"Do you know your car is rolling backwards?"
"Yes, but I thought I was just sliding on ice."
"Why don't you try stepping on the brake and seeing what happens?"
"Hey, that worked, that was a good idea."

I love the early morning starts. 16 ounces of coffee (approx. 2 cups) later, we rolled up to the start of the Stevens Gulch Road and the winter trailhead for Grays Peak. At 6am we started the 3 mile skin to the summer trailhead, the snowpacked road made for sublime skinning conditions. Just as I was starting to wake up I found myself here.

The weather forecast called for wind and snow and snowy wind and windy snow, and while the wind was certainly blowing the skies were mostly clear in the early morning hours.

Most travel brouchers claim that the Stevens Gulch basin is a skier's delight, magnificent surroundings and snowy peaks too. Here climb2ski shows the flats what he's made of.

A rare view of Grays and Torreys.

After making our way across the flats we found ourselves in the upper basin, fortunately we also found our sandwiches and enjoyed a nice picnic before making the traverse into the upper bowl. Here's where I start to pull away fro climb2ski.

I can't keep up.

Help me Ireallyliketoski, it's too steep!

Take a deep breath and relax bro, look at that beautiful view of Mount Sneffles behind you.

Almost there!

The famous %ski brothers on the summit of Grays, our first summit in the past 1 day.

Check me out, I'm 14,276 feet tall right now. We were planning on skiing a line that started at the summit of the mountain and went down from there.

climb2ski schralps the gnar like few can do, maybe you?

Wind hammered, wind loaded, wind slab, does it get any better than this?

Wait, it does.

Our tracks through the upper gully, you can see where I came across climb2skis tracks and cratered. Frayed!

climb2ski traversing out the bottom bowl with the uber sick dead dog looking so sick in the background. Wouldn't you agree it looks sick?

Take me to the bridge.

Skiing down a country road.

We arrived back at the car at 1pm, 14 miles and 4,500 feet later, not too bad for a couple of semi professional sport climbers. As we relaxed by the car, sipping on a malted beverage, we couldn't help but think what a beautiful world we live in.