Elbert Box Chutes
Start/End - Mt. Elbert East Ridge Trailhead
Miles: 9.13
Gain/Loss: ↑4147’ ↓4150’
Closest Towns: Leadville, Twin Lakes
Shuttles/Public Transit: N/A
Took advantage of a nice day with a low avalanche forecast to summit Mount Elbert and ski Box Chutes with Devin and Eric. The plan was to start at 6 am to avoid soft and unstable snow later in the day, and we left right at 530. It seemed like we would start close to the time we intended, but Eric’s car got stuck in the snow about three feet before the lot at the trailhead. After a lot of digging, we finally got started at about 8 am.
We hiked with our skis on our backs for about a mile, then found snow and started skinning up through the trees. It was steep until treeline, gaining about 800 feet in a half mile. Once we broke out into the alpine, we followed the South Elbert Trail, splitting off in places to try to stay on snow. We were mostly successful, but had to do some skinning on rocks and took our skis on and off a few times. The southern ridge along the top of Box Chutes had the most exposed rock, and it made for slow going. We saw a few hikers on the North Elbert Trail and a group of three skiers bootpacking up the middle of Box Chutes, but there were surprisingly few people out on a nice day.
Once we got above the Box Chutes bowl, it was entirely snow up the summit cone. It was also a ~900’ foot climb in a half mile from 13,500’ to the summit, so the slow going continued. With all the transitioning and route finding, it took about four hours and 45 minutes to get to the summit. We’d gotten a later start than expected and didn’t get to the summit until close to 1pm, but the snow was not showing signs of softening. We got to the summit at 12:48pm and took advantage of the hard snow conditions by hanging out at the summit for close to an hour. After plenty of taking in the views, debates about which summits are which, snacks, water, and photos, we got our gear ready for the 4k+’ descent.
Despite leaving the summit at 1:42 pm, the snow was still hard until the top of Box Chutes. The folks that had bootpacked up the middle had traversed around the top of the bowl to ski down a route that was out of avalanche terrain. They had more information than we did about the conditions in the bowl, so we also traversed to a slope that was less steep. It was about 30-40⁰ for most of the descent to the lake at the bottom of the bowl, and still surprisingly hard snow.
We were determined to keep skiing instead of hiking in our ski boots, and made it happen through a lot of skating. I think I took my skis off once until treeline. There were a few minutes of prime corn skiing somewhere in the snowfield below Box Chutes and getting into the trees. We decided to try to ski a gully just south of our skin track up once we got below treeline and quickly encountered wet slush below 11,000 feet.
We switchbacked down a field of aspen trees in a last effort to stay on snow and dropped right on to the Colorado Trail, a quarter mile closer to the trailhead than where we started in the morning. Once we got back on dirt, it was a mellow 0.75 mi back to the trailhead to finish at 4:08 pm. Devin and I got dinner at the Twin Lakes Inn before heading back to Leadville.
See how there’s a GoPro on my head but no footage? That’s about my experience with GoPro.
