Skied 6 August 2008, Duncan Sherratt and Tim Ensor.
"D" System Rating:D7, III, R2
This is the major peak viewed when looking NW from the top of Craigieburn Ski Area.
Access is gained by skiing from the ski area down to Cass Saddle or by walking up the Cass River from Grasmere Station (a much longer option).
We skied up the ridge from Cass Saddle and as this was hard going in the new snow conditions, skied a short couloir into the drainage to the SW. From here it was a relatively easy ski up the SW face to the summit (part of ascent out of view). Another option would be to drop off this ridge early on and ski the whole way up this drainage.
There are various lines off the summit depending on conditions but here are ours.
Then it is a long ski up the sunny NW face back to Craigieburn and a cold beer in the bar.
The SW face of 1912 also has some great skiing as the video shows.
2 comments:
Nice site,looks like you got some sweet skiing down there!
Cool site guys, it deserves more attention.
Getting to be a bit of an old scrote now, but this report brings back a memory or two.
I skied 1912 a few times in the 90s.
The first tine was pretty much down the same line as described (so-so snow), the second a few seasons later is still in my lifetime top 10, the third and last (inconsistently breakable crust) was less fun than skiing icy bumps.
The centre ridge, despite looking like the obvious way up, was always a bit of a bastard, and we'd end up going up one or the other side of it, hoping that we hadn't screwed up our estimations of snow stability.
1912 is very aesthetic, but it involves 2 long hikes / skins to get one ropey run (down from top of CV to Cass saddle on refrozen crust in the morning) and possibly one great run, so, being naturally lazy I always thought the effort to reward ratio to be on the high side.
I prefer Manson on the other side of North Basin (more pay off for the payout)as you can get a slightly bigger vertical for a 3-5hr loop (depending on travelling conditions).
You can ski down the other side of Manson into the the Manson Creek drainage and return down the CV side if you want to make a day trip of it.
There are some nice lines in the Ribbonwood drainage too, especially some of the chutes off Baldy Hill (only did that the once), and the return down Shadowland (South face of North Basin Peak) into North Basin is usually pretty good (lack of sun preserving dry snow).
The main drawback of Manson / Ribbonwood is the return requires either a skin or climbing traverse under some nasty avo start zones or a grovel through the bush to the access road (hit the road at the upper chain fitting area, 30minute walk from base).
Hope to see you post some more cool stuff this season. Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
GD
Post a Comment