This past Saturday, my backcountry partner Andy and I continued along our unbelievable stride this year. After scoring a super soft pillow line at Berthoud Pass on New Year's Day and after finding unsuspecting cliffs to jump off of into two-plus feet of snow in the Dream Lake area of Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park, we pushed ourselves to a new and incredibly rewarding limit.
The goal of the day was to go after Dragon's Tail Couloir, a line I skied once before. However, after examining all our options at the top, we decided it would be best to go for the more eastern-facing and the more wind- & sun-protected neighbor, Dragon's Tooth, or commonly known to the new school crowd as Dead Elk. Click the following link to visit the topo map of our route.
The photo below courtesy of Eli Helmuth of Climbing Life shows our route on the left side highlighted with red dots with Dragon's Tail on the right.
Dragon's Tooth is a 1,700-foot descent with the top quarter averaging out to 44 degrees before reaching an overall angle of 39 degrees. The snow was completely blower up high before the crux, then it turned super creamy and rippable the rest of the way down to Emerald Lake. Total trip time car-to-car was 4.5 hours which could have been drastically shortened had we been more prepared and had we didn't change our minds on what couloir to tackle.
But this was a day unlike any other that either of us have had in RMNP: the sky was clear, the sun was bright and warm, and the wind was absolutely non-existent while pushing a hefty gust to maybe 5 mph at best. On the skin up, we had to constantly contain ourselves from admiring the beautiful weather like the schoolgirls we were. During our periodic breaks on the ascent, Andy and I would glance towards each other with an omniscient smirk acknowledging the rarest of rare days in the park without wanting to disrupt the gods that gave us these amazing conditions.
The most interesting part of the trip was the navigation through the crux which presented us with slight obstacle of sorts. The downclimb was something neither of us perceived prior to dropping into the chute, but we both kept our cool and reasoned thoroughly on how to proceed safely.
And now to pimp my good friends at Moment Skis, this was my first time on one of next year's many new models, the Jaguar Shark, which has dimensions of 143-116-129 combined with tip rocker, camber, and a flat tail. They planed very responsively at various speeds while skiing down the couloir, and the medium flex felt uniform and stiff enough for support through varying and changing snow conditions.
Without further ado, the video portion of our program can begin ...
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