La Plata, North face

This is now a very popular route, and deservedly so. I tried it in 2001, but messed up the approach; 7 people were in it when we finally got there. It is common to camp in the basin and ascend the couloir early in the morning, but it can be done in one day, taking the normal trail to the summit. On May 25, 2002, Bob Portmann, Chet Roe, and I did it by hiking the standard trail to the summit. The first photo above was taken on June 15, 2001, after a major snowstorm; I hiked the trail to 12000 feet, circled to the north to get into the valley below the face, and climbed a little towards the Ellingwood Ridge for the angle I wanted. The first photo was taken on June 15, 2008, from the summit of Elbert. The Ellingwood Ridge is in the foreground. Our descent was in the couloir to the east.

On the 2002 descent, general coverage was very bad that year. The steeper line on the right had rocks showing and was not continuous from the ridge, so we went east to the slightly less steep, but still totally worthwhile, straight couloir. It measured at 40˚ for most of its length. Conditions were difficult, as there had been at least six inches of new snow the preceding day, and that was very heavy to ski through, but we found it both enjoyable and challenging. We climbed the peak by the standard summer trail to the top. Here is a photo from the bottom of the couloir.

If conditions allow, one can ski into the main couloir near the summit directly from the summit. In his new book Fourteener Snow: Ski & Snowboard Colorado’s 14,000′ Peaks, by Louis Dawson (Best Peak Press, 2026), Lou Dawson writes: “My last La Plata visit (as a skier) was a long time ago, in 1979, during my formative years as a ski alpinist. That spring, Bruce Adams and I made the first known ski descent of the north face. We were working for Outward Bound out of Leadville. During a staff bull session, I’d hatched the idea of skiing thirty peaks within ‌thirty days. The B.S. soon got real. Along with Bruce and a few other partners (and several solos), I managed an average of one a day for 30 days, including descents of Mount Elbert, French Mountain, and assorted high 13ers. The weather helped: four weeks of mostly blue sky, cool nights, and corn snow. We’d seen the amazing view of La Plata from the top of Elbert and noticed the aesthetic North Face couloirs were white-loaded. Leaving early from the Outward Bound basecamp near Leadville, we skied the main couloir from the summit, embraced by another perfect day.”