April 22, 2019
I have been lookin at this mountain and dreaming of skiing it since I moved to Durango!! It is the huge mountain you see as you are rolling up to Purgatory!! It is what everyone dreams of skiing one day!! Finally got it! Lee, Mike, and I sent it!! It was a cool reunion for Lee and Mike! They haven’t seen each other in like ten years! We parked the Pow Bus at the top of Coal Bank Pass and started hiking from there! Basically skinned the summer trail into the meadow. Once we got in the meadow we skinned up to right below the first option to boot pack up the East face. We put on or crampons and pulled out the ice axes and started climbing!! This was for sure one of the most exposed hikes I have been on!! We went straight up the East face to the ridge, then traversed the ridge from there!! Crazy man!! No falling allowed! To the right was a steep rock face and to the left was snow with over a hundred foot cliff below!! It was surprisingly smooth sailing! I was able to stay calm and collected!! We got to the summit in no time!!! Once we were on top of our line the stoke got way high!! Gnarly hike to a pretty chill ski!!! We shredded the South face of Engineer! And were able to ski it from the top on the line that does not normally go, but does this year! Lots of lines like that this year! It is the third shot over off the summit! We waited up top for an hour or so for the snow to soften up to corn! The top was a bit firm and then it was great corn skiing! We were skiing it right at the start of the corn farming so it was firm up high and just got softer and softer as we decended! So stoked to have finally skied Engineer! I will always look at this mountain differently now!! Instead of looking at it and thinking one day I will ski that, I can look at it and say I DID SKI IT!!!! For the love of POW!!!!!!! KOOSH COOOOOOORN!
Ski Bum Philosophy 