I could use a good smooth day after Evans and Quandary.

In June, Jann Stoeckl and I were headed to Denali with Aspen friends Sean Shean and Brad Smith. The four of us had the month of May to prep for what would be my biggest trip to date. This seemed to fit as 'preparation'.

We drove to Ouray and then up the Camp Bird Mine Rd. until snow stopped us(before the Yankee Boy turnoff). We skinned up the road and set up camp(with alot of new Denali gear), it was fun. We were moving before dawn, getting high up into Yankee Boy basin, the south side of Sneffels was our goal.

We nailed this day. Climbing the south face(Birthday Chutes) on perfect frozen snow we topped out on without a breath of wind around, and early, giving us ample time to hangout on the summit and let the snow soften. Sneffels is awesome, the view to the north is vast, with huge relief(~8000 feet) down towards Montrose, and the impressive looking 'Snake Couloir' just a rappel off the summit. I would get to experience that in 2005. To the south it's staggering, with and endless sea of San Juan peaks of all shapes and sizes, with todays descent right at our feet.

Ski lines are literally everywhere, you could spend a lifetime around here and always have something different to ski. This was one of those days that validates some of the relative suffering I've experienced on other trips, these memories are the ones that stick.

We skied corn down to the Lavender Col and then cruised all the way back to the truck— Janns' deadbeat photo agent has the slides from this trip, so there aren't any pics to post. Sorry.

We were back in Aspen that night. Later in the week I would get deeper in the San Juans— we were headed in to Chicago Basin.