July 4, Van Trump Park

Skiing on the 4th is pretty much a tradition for me, have done so for at least 6 years back. Briefly considered Mount Ruth, but since I had already been to Steamboat this year (albeit under disappointing conditions) I decided on a different tour. I tried this tour last year a bit later in July but routefinding was confounded by fog. No fog this time (but superhot, got a nice sunburn too). Saw what is probably same band of goats again, in about same place.



Snow in patches starts at about the unofficial trail turnoff. I booted til the top of the unofficial trail then skinned rest. Until exiting on the main trail I saw only one other group of people here, a climbing party of 5 bound for Kautz Gl. Made it to the base of the Turtle, and that was (past) my turnaround time so headed down from there. Rather than follow uptrack I moved one gully skiers left, which barely connected via a snowpatch that goattracks pointed out for me. This gully was much more interesting than the uptrack gully, it had a cool windscoop on skiers left, much smoother snow, and occasional whoopdedoo short headwalls. Despite the notable heat snow was still excellent corn at my descent time of 2:30-3. Some small runnels lower, and slow snow in places where particularly fine black pumice was on surface, but otherwise good. Older tracks in places were slightly raised, making them worth avoiding.


Looking down from highpoint


Looking up the meaty part of the run, you can just see part of the cool windscoop middleright

FWIW the run I did after wandering in fog last year (broader slope/gully lookers L of the main gully to Turtle base, leads more onto Wapo Cleaver just below and L of camps) might be a worthy run in its own right, but did appear that the snow there gets more abuse from rockfall, icing up etc. It's steeper too by 5-10 degrees.

Tourist traffic (and resulting questioning about presence of skis on back) fairly light on trail back. Pretty good flower show, falls running nicely, played tourist and walked into the falls' mist cloud on way down to cool off.