After a smashing success on Black Peak the day before, we were glad to see the forecast was holding for some kind of adventure before returning home on Sunday. It was clear that higher-elevation options were the right move since there was no snow down by Easy Pass and none down at Silver Star Creek either, so we opted for the Birthday Tour, expecting to tack on a summit along the way. Despite having climbed at the pass a lot, I’d never done the Birthday Tour, so it was a great option.
We met up at 8:30am at the hairpin, left a car, and shuttled with the windows rolled down up to Blue Lake Trailhead. At 9am on the nose, we started skinning from the car. We made quick progress through the trees, into the open area below the spires, and up toward Blue Peak Col. In my infinite wisdom, I decided that, having skinned up to the col many times before, I should be able to do it again despite everyone else boot packing up. I made it up some tenuous, slippery sections to about 20 feet below the col where a steep, icy switchback awaited me. With a questionable left ski, I tried in vain a few times to get my right transition ski to stick. Even some bashing with my whippet couldn’t get it flat enough. As I tried one more time to chip out a platform, my left ski blew and I started sliding downhill. Thankfully, a quick whippet self arrest stopped me right next to the boot pack and I switched to booting, only bruising my ego. We were at the col a little after 11am.
From Blue Peak Col, the ski down Madison Avenue was PHENOMENAL—perfect corn at a really fun angle. We side-hilled a bit at the end to get as far over as possible and then did the detour up to Copper Pass, headed for Copper Mountain. We were able to skin until about 6,980’ where the ridge no longer held enough snow to go straight up, so we put the skis on our backs and traversed to the South a bit before cutting up a couloir to the ridge again at 7,380’ and switching back to skins. The cruise to the summit was triumphant, going three across and taking in the awesome views all by ourselves. We hit the top of Copper Mountain at 1:15pm and had a snack before heading back down to the Copper Creek drainage.
We stayed skiers left of our ascent path on the way down, getting onto the warm South Face for a bit but the snow held together. A quick traverse got us back onto the ridge and then down to the drainage. We decided from here to head to the closest exit notch, which had seen plenty of traffic in the last two days. The ski down was great again for the first thousand feet or so, and then got a bit heavier as we traversed our way out to the car at 2:45pm. We ended up doing about 4,400’ and 7 miles. John had beers, beach chairs, and carpet squares in his truck and we sat for a bit in the sun enjoying the whole experience.
I’ve missed spring in the mountains a lot these past couple of months, so it was especially nice to be back out there for some Type-I fun with friends.