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Here’s a brief breakdown of what the change in the weather means for a variety of users: Early season snow, and the resulting viral Instagram posts, get most backcountry skiers and snowboarders dreaming of powder laps rife with face shots or harrowingly steep ski mountaineering ascents/descents through a classic Rocky Mountain couloir. If you’ve noticed icicles forming on the shady aspects of your homes or apartment buildings, then you have an idea as to what’s going on on some of the big North Faces of Rocky Mountain National Park! Some of the Park’s classic ice routes are beginning to shape up and it’s only due time before they are fully formed and ready for an ascent! Autumn is prime time for cool-yet-sunny rock climbing conditions, and Eldorado Canyon, the Flatirons and Boulder Canyon all have mega-classic lines ready to be sent!

This late in the spring, trail conditions were basically dry to the base of the couloir, except for a few avoidable snow patches on the approach talus field, and the standard sidehill snow slope crossing between Chasm Junction and Chasm Lake. The climb itself is in great condition … with a stair-stepped boot pack on the snow slopes, and about 4 or 5 short ice step / bulges that were all great climbing shape. Typically the crux of the route is found about half way up the narrow channel with a possible short pitch of ice and/or mix rock climbing, depending on conditions, but this year it has 4 or 5 short ice steps around AI2 and one easy mixed step at M2ish. Dreamweaver is one of RMNP’s classic snow couloirs that offers steep snow climbing with the potential of mixed ice and rock terrain.

Hear how Colorado Mountain School guide Norie Kizaki approaches motherhood, pregnancy and professional mountain guiding in this special Mother’s Day guide interview. I knew to a small degree that being pregnant and giving a birth would affect my body and my climbing ability for some period of time. But guiding and climbing/skiing have been important part of my life. When you want to have a day of work or a day of personal climbing, you will have to plan ahead of time.

Using time estimates for each leg of the tour, back into the start time Write down your plan and bring it with you into the field. A detailed tour plan looks something like this: This type of tour plan contains a row for each waypoint and includes the distance, elevation change, and compass bearing to the next waypoint. As I reach each waypoint on my tour, I note the actual time and include comments to explain any deviation from the plan (see example tour plan above). The bottom-line takeaway on tour planning is that having a plan, and keeping track of your progress against that plan throughout the day, gives you the information you need to make decisions in the field.