January 15, 2006, Headlee Pass

On Sunday my brother Mike and I toured into Headlee Pass, near Vesper Peak. We set out for Vesper but stopped at Headlee Pass. Too much snow for the two of us. We drove to the trailhead, (the Mountain Loop Highway was drivable to Monte Cristo) and then boot packed the snow covered trail for as long as we could. We hiked to approx 3000 ft, then put our skins on near Wirtz basin. The skin to the foot of the couloir leading to headlee pass was through snow anywhere from two foot deep to bottomless. Everything looked, felt, and sounded stable. Before heading up to the pass we dug a pit and found 6-8 inches atop a consolidated layer at least 4 foot deep. We tried to skin up the couloir but changed to bootpacking once the combination of steepness and powed made progress nearly impossible.


We stuck close to the couloir's sides, and periodically went one at time, connecting safety zone to safety zone. Near the top we were wading thru chest deep snow.
It took us 3 and a half hours to go 2 miles and approx 2500’- way too slow to make it all the way up Vesper. So we headed down.

The couloir started out with a small convex roll. We expected some sluff, so at my brother’s suggestion I ski-cut a line across its top. Sure enough, a fracture about 4 inches deep fell away beneath me. Not much, really, exactly what we expected. But I was nevertheless surprised despite my experience at how much snow 4 inches can become by the time it’s travelled 500 feet. When the slide hit the bootleg half way down snow exploded upwards like a wave crashing into an ocean side cliff. It was pretty neat to see. The fracture line extended about 20 feet down to the skier's left.

The ski down wasn't as good as we had hoped it would be. The slide had skimmed off the top coat and had left us with some pretty thick stuff to navigate. Still fun though. By the time we repacked our skis for the hike out we were both happy to have made the trip.