At the time, I had no idea what it was, but it looked supremely bad-ass. So I went home, started googling, and found out that what I was looking at was Grizzly Peak, a hard to reach summit 9 miles from the nearest major road. Standing at 13,988 feet, it's just short of official "fourteener" status, but it would still be far and away the most technical high-altitude climb and ski we'd attempted. But attempt it we would.
Saturday morning we were up at 4, climbing by 5:30. The approach was LONG and flat until we reached Grizzly Lake, set right at the bottom of Grizzly Chute, the ever so enticing patch of snow running the length of the right-hand side of the mountain in the picture above.
Once you reach the lake, the only way to the summit is to climb straight up the chute. Since it's a bit of a western exposure, it was still firm as we stripped off our skis and started to boot straight up. The chute averages 40 degrees, with a bulge that reaches 45, so it was a long, hard climb. Towards the top, I would catch my breath and then climb until exhaustion, only to look at my altimeter and find out I had climbed 20 vertical feet. It was seriously, seriously humbling.
We reached the summit shortly after 9 AM, and if we raised our poles above our head, we could just about reach the acclaimed "fourteener" status. The rest was easy. Point our skis over the cornice, drop into the chute, and make turns for 1,500 feet. Oh, and don't fall, because at 45 degrees, nothing's stopping you until you hit the lake!
