Backcountry Skiing the North Face of Mount Democrat, Alma, Colorado
The north face of Mount Democrat is a face I’ve had on my list for some time and with northerly aspects still skiing quite well, Mike and I decided to go check it out. We parked at the winter gate by the Montgomery Reservoir and strapped our skis to our pack as the part of the road we could see had no snow on it. We set out walking along the road and found ourselves walking much longer than expected. The road was completely melted out in spots and required navigating around large pools of water while other spots still had snow that we thankfully weren’t post-holing through too much on our approach. After 1.7 miles of walking, the snow finally looked to be continuous and we put our skis on.
After another half mile or so, we left the road and followed the bottom of the valley to the base of Democrat. As we arrived, two people were dropping in to ski the face so we got to see how conditions looked. They looked pretty good! It also meant we didn’t need to put in a new bootpack as we had one to follow. We skinned up a few hundred feet of the line and then we transitioned to ski boots and crampons. 1500 vertical feet later we found ourselves at the top. We didn’t linger long as there were some very dark storm clouds headed our way and we wanted to ski down before we lost visibility.
There are a couple of line options on this face. We decided to ski one that was slightly lookers left of the middle of the mountain that funneled into a skinny couloir at the bottom of the line. We found some pretty good powder for the top 2/3 of the line. Once we got to the couloir, it was pretty beat up so our powder turns ended, and we focused more on survival skiing. Once at the bottom, we debated going back up for another line, but decided it wasn’t a great idea with the storm rolling in. We then headed back to the car the same way we came in and found ourselves post-holing quite a bit more on our way out. It’s approaches and exits like these that build some character. I’d like to come back to ski some other options on this face in the future.
Stats: 9.75 miles, 3000 ft of elevation gain
