Kings Peak: Almost Kings

it's 5:00 a.m. and we're here in Wayne Ship Utah where we are supposed to meet up with Aaron and Aaron is late 28 25 minutes late not responding to text messages and we're wondering how much time we have to give him before we just go on what's the appropriate amount of time 30 minutes because at some point we're gonna have to ditch him I wanted to go camp at the trailhead the reason we're leaving our house is at 4:00 in the morning is because of him and now he's not even showing up we'll give him a couple more minutes but we're probably gonna have to go on I've never ever had this happen in all my years of going out and adventuring I've never had a friend not show up so today's already a day of firsts but we're out of here [Music] [Music] Christophe was in Tokyo 24 hours ago so he's probably exhausted but he's a trooper he's gonna stick it out we are here at Henry's Fork trailhead and today we'll be taking the trail up and around through gunsight pass up to the summit of Kings Peak we might do an alternative route through Anderson Pass if the conditions allow then we might either just ski right back down or climb up gilbert peak and ski down from there our mileage today should be somewhere around 24 miles with 4200 feet of climbing i actually got a call from aaron about an hour ago and he said he was in his car and he was going to try and catch up i gotta hand it to him if it were me nights up through my alarm I tell you right now I would have just gone right back to bed just watch the episode when it came out a couple weeks later I guess it's time to get started on what's going to be a very very long day I foresee [Music] yeah man aren't you what happened Aaron you know I figured you guys needed a head start obviously I was right Aaron just rolled up as Christoph and I were filming our departure scene from the truck and I guess that Christoph and I are the slowest people on the planet Earth and Aaron is the fastest so good for him you got to sleep in and start at the same time as us so I'm really happy for him [Music] [Music] yes the information you get from the Forest Service can be helpful and sometimes not so helpful in this case she was correct it was clear to the trailhead but there was not a foot and a half of snow at the trailhead we're here after about two miles maybe a mile and a half of hiking in our ski boots and now we're just throwing on our skis and hoping the snow continues on from here [Music] [Music] [Music] we're a couple miles in and I've been try not to bore you with this very long approach to the base of the mountains here but it's just one notable thing we keep having to do is walk on rocks and cross streams and I'm secretly enjoying it because Christophe has a brand-new pair of skis so if he expected this but he's definitely breaking them in today [Music] [Music] yesterday [Music] if you hear is outstanding gunsight pastor anderson bass yeah I don't think there's that much snow to wear slide but certainly going directly to have us and past be more brisk even going up and over is a more direct route and the lazy person to me just wants to go straight [Music] [Music] [Music] we'll see how that shoot is we made the decision back there to commit to going up it and now I just dug a pit and not super super stoked about the results we're here at the bottom of Anderson pass we just dug a pit to check the stability and it's somewhere in the gray area which is never where you want to be with avalanche danger hoping maybe we can get out from underneath the avalanche danger or two layers one's about four inches and one's about 18 inches so we're gonna try and see if we can skirt the side of the chute and not disrupt the avalanche gods Aaron doesn't like the situation Avalanche wise up Anderson alright we going down okay disappointment but what can you do better to be alive rather die never know like one step to the next like what you're gonna find with the pit and the snow conditions and the wind it's really hard to say what would happen if we tried to go this hundred yards to the safety of the rocks right above us but the optimum of a bad decision here is possibly the death of liner great thing is that if we all die they're gonna visually gonna recover this footage and they're gonna know that we knew it was dangerous I'm the biggest summit [ __ ] there is and I didn't want to ski kings and having this done this 10 miles traverse it's hard to say if I ever actually got back this is like the worst time to turn around but I've been on the Kings and yellow very actually looks like it could be pretty cool that's that's what I'm thinking and I don't I don't think that shoots could have the same sort of wind loading as we're seeing here cut over not even gonna take our skins off or put our skis and ski mode [Music] my big mountain dreams have been smashed into a million tiny pieces we've decided after much conversation and disappointment that instead of going up gunsight paths and summoning Kings where you go some with the third highest peak in the UN test called Hilbert Beach I think we're all disappointed except for maybe Christophe Gilbert peak his lease in the direction of the car [Music] probably put in 13 miles almost none of it downhill the views however continued to remain spectacular just got my first glimpse of Gilbert peak and it's as big a wet blanket of a peak as the name suggests more of a mound just happens to be it like 30,000 feet or so I am hanging on by a thread just being dragged along would you say that your bone tired I'd say I'm dog bone tired I don't know if it was a good idea to come out because I can barely talk now I my cough sounds like I've been smoking two packs a day for my entire adult life and but I guess it's better than going to church on Sunday [Laughter] Green another [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] push over by the wind Ramos at the top of Gilbert peak and it's just let's let's get this over way [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the top of Gilbert Beach 13,000 435 feet and Aaron keeps reminding me so honestly [Music] you can do it without it's just a matter of how bad you like conditions we're just eating a quick snack trying to enjoy ourselves at least a little bit before we ski down this terrible terrible snow down to the bushwhack by the river all the stands between us in the car six miles in four thousand feet of downhill [Music] I really can't see where we are [Music] [Music] desperate times call for desperate measures for sure these guys are gonna let a barge stream stop them there's just enough downhill slope to convince us not to put our skins on but we probably should have put our climate skins on two or three months ago I will never complain about a long slog again [Music] [Music] so that's the last challenge of the day [Music] [Music] [Laughter] today was a day of things just not going right first errands alarm supposedly never went off but he caught up to us here then there was no snow at the trailhead so we had to hike in our ski boots for a couple miles then when we got up there there was avalanche danger so he went to plan B Plan B was unbelievably windy I cracked the lens on my GoPro Aaron broke a pole Kristoff crashed four or five times then we skied down a recommended descent route and if I ever made the people who recommended coming off of Gilbert down here I will probably slap them with a Dueling glove because I am ready to do all then we had a brutal bushwhack slog through slush I don't think we were meant to be out today I think that Christoph was meant to be at church it's hard to complain when you get up high in the un tiss cuz it's amazing up there when I first did Kings peak that was the longest I've ever covered on foot in one day and even though we didn't do Kings food today this is the longest I've ever been on skis in terms of mileage and man Ian did you ever watch this that was the worst worst possible recommendation to stay on the ridge of Gilbert

Channel: Mediocre Amateur

Views: 71,949

Rating: 4.9567027 out of 5

Keywords: kings peak, skiing kings peak, uinta skiing, uinta mountains, henrys fork, henrys fork trail, gilbert peak, backcountry skiing, utah, steep, planet earth, 100 miles from nowhere, trail running, hiking kings peak, hiking the uintas, hiking, travel vlog, adventure vlog, ski vlog, vlog

Id: NKUZ4Tj4ehY

Length: 17min 19sec (1039 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2019