Skiing Missouri Mountain

Missouri Mountain is a 14,000ft mountain located deep in the Sawatch range.

The Sawatch mountains have a lot of rise. Missouri mountain starts at 9,650 ft going to a summit at 14,071 ft. Since we did this in June the snow line was right around tree line, meaning we had to hike up 2000 ft before we could put skins/skis on. Since there would be a lot of walking we opted for trail runners with skis and boots on the back.

We finally got a view of the mountain once up in the valley, but we're still a ways out. Finally at around 12000ft we found a ribbon of snow that snaked up the valley towards Missouri. We skinned to the base of the mountain and got ready to boot up.

There were a few options of couloirs and it was impressive how snowy the north face of Missouri still was in June. Fortunately there was already a boot pack to make our work easier; just over 1000 ft of stairs to the summit.

We made it to the top and it was pretty great to be standing on top of a new fourteener to ski down!

Our timing was solid for perfect corn snow. We dropped in around 10am and had a great run. The couloir was a perfect pitch of steep but not too steep. After the couloir proper, the apron (the less steep part of the couloir where it opens up) also skied great as we could really open up our turns. Check out the video below for the skiing!

The main event was over but we still had a nice jaunt down the remaining snow left in the valley - keeping the skis on for as long as possible. Unfortunately we made it to the end of the snow line and tranistioned back to our trailrunners. After a successful summit and ski we were happy to be almost done. A little while later back at the car. Pooped.

Video of the day here: