Skiing Witch’s Hat, Buffalo Mountain, Eagles Nest Wilderness, Silverthorne, Colorado
Krista with the Witch’s Hat in the background
Witch’s Hat is a line on Buffalo Mountain that I hadn’t heard of until a few days before I skied it. I wasn’t able to find much info about it online so we were going in to the line with limited beta. We took the typical winter route to the top of Buffalo and transitioned to downhill mode. The line is on the north side of the mountain and my biggest concern was picking the right entrance as there is a lot of opportunity to get cliffed out on that side of the mountain. Thankfully, we could see the rock feature that looked like a witch’s hat that gave the line it’s name from the top of the line and felt pretty confident we were choosing correctly. The top part of the line was pretty steep - I would guess in the upper 40s. It was also very wind affected and this turned out to be the case for the majority of the line. We also made the foolish decision to ski the line on a very windy day, which I’m sure didn’t help snow conditions. We frequently found ourselves breaking off dinner plate pieces of wind-affected snow as we skied. The majority of the line was 40+ degrees and wound its way down the north side of Buffalo. Towards the bottom, the line opened up into more of an apron and the slope angle lessened. We found some of the best skiing in this part of the line as the sun was able to soften it. We then found ourselves in the South Willow Creek drainage and had to put our skins back on to get back to the summer trailhead for Buffalo Mountain.
Overall, this line was very aesthetically beautiful, however conditions were pretty bad due to how wind affected the snow was. I was unable to tell if conditions are normally that wind affected or not. This line seems to get significantly less traffic than its neighbors. I’m not sure if that’s simply because it’s not in any guidebooks (that I’ve seen) or if it’s because it’s typically very wind affected, leading to difficult skiing. If you’re looking for a steep adventure on Buffalo, this would be a line to check out.
Total Stats: 5.0 miles, 3000 ft of elevation gain
