Moving east from Half Peak we traveled to the town of Creede to ski Phoenix Peak 13,895 ft. Though it doesn’t look like an exciting mountain when viewed from Creed, we found a fun, steep line to ski on the peak’s east side which impressed us all.
After skiing today, we got on the road and started moving further east to the Sangres. There is spotty internet throughout the San Luis Valley, so I’ll share some photos here and try to put up a more detailed report when our road trip concludes.
Phoenix is the high point of a massive ridge above the town of Creede.
Christy and Chris assess the ski options. We ascended a rather tame and uninteresting route, so the option of skiing the big east facing bowl pictured here was appealing.
It’s Christy’s turn. Dav watches from the ridge above.
After we skied the east side, we climbed back up to the ridge seen in the left of the background in order to get back on the route to where we started. It was a more fun way to ski the mountain than to merely retrace our route of ascent.
Once back up on the ridge, our route down the east side was in view, marked in red.