Backcountry Skiing Coon Hill, Dillon, Colorado
Coon Hill is probably one of the busiest backcountry skiing areas in Colorado. It is about an hour from Denver and the parking lot for it is right off I-70, just west of the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel. Even though we had a long day on Mount Democrat the day before, we decided not to pass up skiing on what was forecast to be a beautiful spring day. We parked just off the highway, put on our boots and skis, and started traveling up the drainage. Our goal for that day was to ski the east facing bowl from the top of Coon Hill. We traveled up the bottom of the drainage for just a short while before we cut left and started skinning up the lower east facing slopes below Point 12,377. We made our way up to the saddle between the summit of Coon Hill and Point 12,377 and then continued to skin up the ridge towards Coon Hill. There were some large cornices that we gave a wide berth. We made it to the top in pretty good time.
The forecast was for no clouds and light winds, but unfortunately we found fairly cloudy skies and 40 mph wind gusts. This ended up meaning that we were much too early for the snow to corn, but we weren’t about to wait for things to warm up and soften in 40 mph winds. So we transitioned and began to ski down a very firm, crusty east-facing bowl. The bowl had seen so much use that it felt like there were moguls in spots. Once we made it to the bottom of the bowl, we knew we weren’t going to go back up for another lap as the snow wouldn’t be soft by then. We were about to keep skiing when a local ptarmigan started squawking at us from a few feet away. It was so well camouflaged, we didn’t even realize it was there! Another one popped out as well. After saying hi to them, we skied right back down to the car. At least it was a short approach and not a very committing day to realize we had gotten the weather wrong!
Stats: 3.0 miles, 1400 ft of elevation gain
