Wrong/Pestle E Couloir

3/21/24

After visiting Crescent Lake multiple times in the summer, it was finally time to return in the winter to do some skiing. With only ideas of what would be good skiing, we knew we had to head in to see where the good were.

A group of three of us met at the Carter Lake trailhead at around 10am and found out we were the only three crazy enough to skin up the trail, everyone else had snowmachines to make quick work of the few miles and 1000 feet of gain required to make it to the alpine step. We began up, and were quickly passed by the machiners that started after us. The jealousy was real on this trail…

We made our way to Carter Lake, and saw a plane sitting on the lake, even more jealousy building. As we walked across the lake, the plane began for takeoff. It taxied across the lake, and took off coming towards us. It was a great treat to watch such an aesthetic takeoff, and right behind the plane from our perspectives we saw an incredible couloir between Wrong and Pestle peaks. We had all been independently checking it out, but the takeoff is what brought our focus together. 

We agreed to head that way and check it out, unsure how it would look when we got closer. As we approached, we realized one wall was subject to wet slides with warming and sunny weather, but the other wall was fully in the shade. The mouth of the couloir was wide enough to avoid any small wet problems that might drop from the sunny wall, but we acknowledged that heading into the guts of the couloir would not be wise with the conditions and increasing temps. It seemed like a good day to ski the simpler terrain at the bottom of the couloir without getting too committed. 

At the base of the couloir, we took a look at the snowpack and confirmed that our biggest problem was warming snow and wet slides. With this info, we began a short book pack up the bottom of the couloir. We only climbed about 500 feet until we decided to pull the plug and enjoy our short ski down. There was decent edgeable snow the whole way up in the shadows and icy chunks that had fallen off alders and rocks littering the sunny side.

We transitioned and picked straws on who would ski first. In typical fashion, I offered it to someone else so I could guarantee a top to bottom ski instead of feeling the need to stop halfway. I ended up skiing second, and the snow was exactly as predicted. It was essentially a backcountry groomer minus the death cookies littered throughout. I was able to carry good speed throughout the whole couloir, but I felt the need to throttle it a touch just to be sure I didn’t find a chunk of ice unexpectedly.

After we all got our turns through the couloir, we party lapped our way on down to the flats between Crescent and Carter lakes. It was here that myself and the other skier found great success in skating across the flat snow. The splitboarder in the group was not as stoked, but got some good practice in skate skiing.

The biggest challenge of the day was probably descending the whoops that the snow machiners had put in on the Carter Lake trail. It was good practice mogul skiing, but when the track isn’t wide enough to fit your skis across in, it makes for a hard time stopping. The exciting trail skiing provided us more prescribed turns than the couloir, isn’t it funny how that’s the case sometimes?

At the bottom, we all felt rather satisfied with our exploratory mission, and we agreed that we had likely made the right choices in keeping it tame in new terrain. We all look forward to the next time we can make it back to this zone.