Brainard lake Backcountry Ski

What a better way to take advantage of a Martin Luther King day of than a little Backcountry ski adventure in the Indian peaks wilderness above Boulder.  I'm pretty sure it's what Dr. king would have wanted.  The day started early with my Brother, his Girlfriend Hanna, and Greg.  It was super windy out when we reached the Brainard lake trailhead and they were calling for some snow throughout the day.  For those who haven't ever been and live in the area it is a pretty incredible network of trails although not the best for a full on backcountry setup as we learned. Ok i'll admit it, I've been a bad ski bum and this was my first day strapping skis to me feet all year so i was really looking forward to it.

My bro, Greg and myself all had our full backcountry set up while Hanna had a lighter cross country set up.  It quickly became obvious though that because of the poor snow conditions Hanna's fish scale skis weren't going to cut it. She was a great sport about it and was able to keep up for a while by just walking, but eventually had to turn around because the snow got to deep.  It's been a really weird winter and the lack of snow combined with really hot days and cold nights haven't made for great backcounty skiing conditions.  I just listened to podcast that said back country ice skating conditions were amazing though... that's right backcountry ice skating.

This is what we would have been skiing if conditions
had been better

The goal was to skin up the trail to lake Isabelle, roughly 5 miles and from there assess the conditions and decide if we wanted to make some turns on steeper terrain.  By the time we go to lake Isabelle roughly 4hrs had already elapsed, skinning is slow going with a full on backcountry setup. It had been a long day, we were pretty tired and ready to turn around.

I'm not sure who mentioned it but we decided to stop and dig a snow pit. Greg is a pretty experienced backcountry skier who lived in Aspen for several years, i'm always trying to learn as much as i can and my brother is fairly new to the whole thing so it was the perfect time for a little education.  It quickly became evident that there was a weak layer about two below the surface.  It was like frozen sand, I think they call it the depth hoar and it can be extremely dangerous.  Check out the video!.  After Greg posted it to Facebook CAIC somehow got a hold of it and posted it on their FB page. We're sorta famous!

This was my first backcountry trip where i felt like we skinned up hill both ways.  A 10 mile skin makes for a long day and if i did this route again i'd like to find a way to get closer to ski able terrain.  Nevertheless it wa a lot of fun and we were exhausted by the time we got back to the car.  The only cure we could come up with for our exhaustion was pizza and a stop at Avery brewery for some high abv beer.