The caller ID said Lou Dawson. The father and son duo were thinking about a trip to Oxford and Belford and offered up the invite. So Christy and I met them, along with Jordan White, at the Missouri Gulch TH the evening before.

Aside from a single spring ski day up on Independence Pass, I haven't spent much time with Lou and considering what I find myself into these days, I owe a good amount of credit to him as an influence. Not so much as a direct mentor but having hailed from Long Island all of my mountaineering experience came during my years out here, often with his guidebook in hand. I was green to all of this until the day I borrowed skins and some Alpine Trekkers and tagged along on a trip to ski Mount Sopris. Later that summer, I climbed Pyramid Peak, then bought his guidebook, and went to work. So it would be fun to have a 14er ski day with Lou and Louie(I was glad to meet Jordan, too).

What didn't sound so fun was the 3:30 a.m. revelry the mentor suggested when discussing the day before us, but what can you do? He's the man- right? Surprised for it's only a few miles to the summit, being accustomed to calling the shots and liking to sleep in whenever possible, I wasn't sure if I should say anything, lest the man look down on me. There's a relevant cliche here, something to do with respecting one with wisdom, age or experience, I can't recall. So I told Lou I thought 3:30 was just what we were thinking and went back to the truck to break the news to Christy, she thought I was joking. She likes to stay in the sleeping bag even more than me!

Moving on, the snow started a few hundred yards from the truck, so we skinned the switchbacking trail to treeline and headed for the low angle couloir lookers left of Belfords' NW ridge. Near the top, the steep skinning forced a transition to boots and we arrived at the summit- early, of course. Early was good though, the rocky nub atop Belford never holds snow so we pulled out the shovels and dug ourselves a kicker(like Dav in 2006). It was fun, kept us warm and provided a few laughs at the acrobatics witnessed.

Once off the top we skied down the northeast side towards Oxford. Excited to have claimed another summit, for the new skis I was on and for the company present, just to name a few reasons, I charged down until some breakable snow had me on my head. Upon righting myself, with a fat lip and missing ski Lou mentioned in full parental tone that we might want to take it easy and not have any accidents. Just a little embarassing, I quickly put it behind me.

We skied on down, hanging a right to meet up with the Oxford/Belford saddle, racking our skis and going for summit #2 of the day. The coverage on Oxford was poor and the winds bad so we spent only a short time up there before billygoating a line down the west side. Down in the basin we pulled out the skins and headed back across the Belford/Pecks Peak saddle and got ourselves back down into Missouri Gulch. We skied the tight swtichbacks back to the TH.

Very fun day, due in particular to the new ski partners. Lous' take here. Five weeks later, after some classic ski descents in the Tetons and Pacific Northwest as well as a trip to Iceland, I got back to the 14ers, with Tabegauche.