- Date: April 18, 2021
- Distance: 4.8 miles round trip
- Elevation Gain: 2,600′
- Trailhead: Watrous Gulch
As the spring snowpack consolidated, Mark and I found our first day to take advantage of it this season. With a fairly restrained time window, we decided to ski something with a short approach that allowed for easy skiing. We decided on Woods peak which sits just North of I-70, not an hour drive from Denver where Mark is currently living.
There were several other groups leaving from the trailhead when we parked around 7 am. Different groups were choosing different strategies to navigate the first mile of trail which was alternated between snow, dirt and rocks. Mark and I decided to keep our skis on our backs until we made it higher into the basin. The hiking was fast, and we tried to keep moving in order to beat the small snow storm moving in. The views behind us as we hiked up the Watrous Gulch were impressive: the north face of Torrey’s stared at us from across I-70. We hiked up the basin, roughly following the summer trail until we reached a good spot to gain the ridge between Parnassus and Woods and start heading toward the summit.
When we reached the east ridge of Woods, the wind was picking up, and skinning over the wind crust was more difficult than the hiking down in the valley, but we reached the summit with relative ease. We admired the views looking over the north side of Woods and wondered at all the potential spring skiing.
Our chosen route would take us down an obvious snowfield, just skier’s right off of the summit. Usually for steeper objectives we hike up what we ski down. Not having that experience here, we were feeling a little nervous to make our first turns. He started conservatively, dropping in over the steepest pitch. Still, we got ready to ski and Mark volunteered to make the first turns. Finding grippy consistent snow, he called me to follow. We skied one at a time, taking joy in not only our own turns, but getting to watch one another ski down. As the slope mellowed, we opened up our turns and reached the base of the peak.
When we reached tree line, we decided we had enough time to ski some well spaced trees we had seen on the way in. We traversed around the valley to the west side of the gulch where we were greeted with 500′ more of fun skiing to take us back down to the bottom of the valley and the trail. We skied the trail for as long as we could, until the risk of a core shot on one of the shallow or exposed rocks overwhelmed our desire to keep sliding downhill. We put our skis on our back and slipped down the now muddy trail.
The skiing and hiking was just what we were looking for, and our little line through the trees peaked our interest to come back next season for some potential mid-winter laps.