Grand Traverse Peak: South Face

This beautiful Gore Range 13-er holds snow well, but is a bear to get to (though by no means as hard as Peaks C or Z). On June 19, 2005, I got to Deluge Lake solo, but did not have the energy to climb the face. It looks like a fine ski down, not terribly steep, but steep and long enough to be interesting. Photo below taken this day.

On June 22, 2005, I returned, again solo, except this time with a GPS since I got lost on descent on Sunday. The GPS was wonderful in finding an efficient route to the tricky (snow-covered) trail down. I did not quite make the summit as the angle steepens at the highest rocks in the photo, and the slush was an issue. So I probably got to 12850 feet on the 13041-foot peak. Once away from the rocks the ski down the face was fine.

This peak is the southern end of the Grand Traverse and the face is well visible as one heads down I-70 west of Vail Pass.

On June 21, 2007, Aaron Parmet and Andy Dimmen camped out near the lake and skied this face (continuous snow top to bottom) and then a steeper line on the east side of Valhalla.

Finally, on May 31, 2009, we reached the very top carrying our skis and conditions were good—soft as expected for a southeast face this time of year, but it skied very nicely. I was joined by Jonathan Kriegel, Katie Jones, and Dave Bombard. There was a lot more snow in the valley than I expected and that made travel pretty good. Still, it was a long day: 6 hours to summit, 3 hours down.