Three Coulior Day in the Winds: Part 3, Chuck's Coulior

Part 3:

Calvert Lake Couliors
Southern Wind River Range, Silas Canyon, Popo Agie Wilderness Area, Shoshone NF
April 8th, 2006

Chuck's Coulior

This time Chuck begins the stomp up his coulior.

He didn't know it was his at the time. None of these couliors have names that I know of. It's also pretty safe to say that they've never been skied or boarded by anyone before. I needed some way to tell them apart and describe them. I figured, three of us, three couliors, that'll work for me. Ha!

Karla starting up her third coulior for the day.

Chuck getting close to the bottleneck on his coulior. From this point on we'll go from safe spot to safe spot, one at time. There's a hefty cornice aimed right at the neck of this puppy, and I saw evidence of a good wet slide in this coulior a month ago. I'm not too worried about the cornice dropping this time, because the snow is not hot enough, and it is only getting cooler now.



As we negotiate the neck and narrows, we hug the right wall and move from safe spot to safe spot- or as safe as we think it might get. You can see the cornice we're worried about up the head of coulior.



Once out of the narrow neck, it opened up and we were once again able to get out of the main slide path should the cornice decide to go. It got steep though. Chuck makes his way up my boot track, probably wishing he had an ice axe.

Looking down Chuck's Coulior as Chuck makes the final climb up between two cornices.

Shad on top of Chuck's coulior. Something not too many can claim, I would imagine. Ha!

Chuck rest and enjoys the view from the top of his coulior.

Time to ride! The snow got colder while we climbed. It was more scralping than we thought it would be riding Chuck's coulior. Still fun though. If you look behind Chuck, you can see the drifted spot where we were able to climb up between the corniced ridged. Turns out the cornices were really solid. Better safe that sorry though.

Chuck puckers up...

and drops his crack like a pro!!

Chuck's coulior, after we were done with it.

The "atomic" line down Chuck's Coulior.

Chuck hugged the left in the shade where the powder was better. I opted for scralping the gut. Did a flip turn or two as well too, but hey- it looks cool! Ha!

This pretty much sums the whole day up.

From a distance you get a good idea how big and how steep our lines for the day really were. By the time we made it back to the snow-machines around 5:30pm, Chuck's gadget said we had boot hiked, skied and skinned almost seven miles and had gained over seven thousand feet in elevation for the day.

What a way to wrap up another winter season in the Southern Wind Rivers. I might make it out a few more times before I have to put the sleds up and get out the hiking boots, but I doubt I'll be having any more three coulior days for a while.




What Shad does alot of after a three coulior day.