Brittany & Frank Konsella

I first laid eyes on Sayres Benchmark in June of 2006, when skied nearby La Plata Peak, my 6th 14,000-ft peak skied during my Colorado Fourteener Skiing project. At an obvious switchback, we left the trail as it started upward toward La Plata, and we wanted to continue further up the valley, following along La Plata Gulch. We had hoped to descend the steeper X-Rated Couloir, lookers left of the Grand Central. We just skied a beautiful line on a stunning peak in powder in May on one of the worst ski seasons in Colorado 🙂

From the Jamtal Hut, we headed south and up the valley, eventually traveling on the Jamtalferner Glacier. I dropped in first, on the skiers left couloir, just lookers left of the summit. After skiing Gamsspitze, we had to decide whether to descend the glacier a bit in order to reascend on the other side, which would allow us to go over a pass called Tiroler Scharte, the traditional way to Weisbadener Hut, which was our destination for the evening. We headed up toward our first pass, Jamjoch, admiring the views Gamsspitze along the way.

I’d stood just beneath it on our way to ski CC Rider Couloir on Peak C a few years back Either you wait until Red Sandstone Road to Piney Lake is open to drive, or you go earlier and make the 8-mile journey to the lake via a snowmobile. I escaped the closing-day apres-ski tradition to hit the road at a reasonable time to try to get close to the trailhead and catch some zzz’s. I met my friend Larry at the trailhead – who was just as eager as I after having also stood beneath Powell when we skied Peak C along with me in 2016.

That meant we had time to make a few laps at the ski area and check out the scenery: One curious thing about Ischgl was the “duty free” store in Switzerland. We skipped that and headed towards the Heidelberger hut: For the uninitiated, huts in Europe are often more like a hotel, plenty of rooms, great food, and beer, of course. We headed to the pass called Kronenjoch, though it’s not the only route between the Heidelberger and the Jamtal. Brittany skiing the ripple snow towards the hut: It would have been easy at this point to call it a day and ski to the Jamtal hut and enjoy a dunkelweiss in the sun.