Silverton To Telluride - Icelantic Continues To Tour SW Colorado

After some serious time at Silverton Mountain with the Bent Gate Crew we headed over to Telluride to see some friends and ride the coat tails of our athletes Julian Carr and Whit Boucher as they were on their way to ski with Telluride Helitrax for an article in The Ski Journal.

We arrived to more spring conditions and learned that we had an opportunity the to get a heli drop first thing in the morning to the top of the iconic Lightning Bolt Couloir which sits across the valley from Telluride Resort.

We woke up early and drove the Icelantic Jeep Wrangler up to the airport and right up to the Helitrax heli. We parked in the hanger and jumped on the heli and off we went. After about five minutes of flying and scoping our line we were dropped at the top. We skied down Lightning Bolt Couloir one at a time before traversing across the basin below in pursuit of another couloir to climb up. As a group we marched for about an hour up a tight couloir to a knife edge spine which then brought us to another summit with a 360 view of the entire San Juan range and a view of the town of Telluride from 12680 ft. From there we skirted around to a south facing aspect know as Uncle Sam which offered up an expanse of soft, sun exposed corn snow. We were able to take this all the way down to a gully which took us under the old power station and on down to the top of town where we were picked up and shuttled back to the airport.   Each of us on this mission were lightning bolt virgins and no one had ever done this route before. Needless to say the stoke levels were very high all day! Thank you to Todd Herrik and Matt Steen for treating us and guiding us through this amazing experience! Stay tuned for a video recap! -The Icey Crew