- Date: April 18, 2023
- Distance: 7 miles round trip
- Elevation Gain: 3,800′ (includes hike out of north basin)
- Trailhead: French Gulch, Breckenridge
Mark and I decided to rally for a quick ski on our way to Denver as we kicked off our time off together. Guyot is an accessible peak outside of Breckenridge that is a popular ski due to its visibility from many local ski areas. The Swan Dive couloir curls off the North face of the summit amid a rocky, but relatively gentle face.
Mark and I drove up from Leadville early in the morning to French Gulch, where we hiked along the frozen dirt road until the turnoff for the trail up the Northwest face of Guyot. We climbed through the trees and then enjoyed near continuous snow to the summit. The wind scoured surface made for some slow moving, but the straightforward route lent itself to an overall quick approach.
At the summit we enjoyed the views, trying to identify notable landmarks and then dropped into the snowfield for consistently terrible turns to the bottom of the basin. A combination of wind, sun and then cold made the snow surface variable and challenging, but we enjoyed the novelty of the alpine turns regardless.
At the bottom of our ski, we scooched through the trees trying to contour the best we could until we finally had to return to skins and hike over a shoulder back into the basin we had come up. Upon cresting that hill, we skied some great corn snow through the trees, only to realize we had descended a sub drainage and would have to once again dawn skins to make it back to the trailhead. We were weighed down by warming snow clumping to our skins as we hiked, but eventually topped out the ridge and scooted back to the road where we hiked the now muddy road back to our car.
Despite our misstep, it was a simple ski and a great start to the ski mountaineering season for Mark and I and had us looking forward to many more objectives.