Kleins, Marjorie Bowl, Lenawee Mountain, Keystone, Colorado
Mike partway down Kleins
Kleins is a line where you can get a nice, full run in with a pretty short approach. Mike and I went in to Marjorie Bowl with the intention to ski Shit for Brains Couloir, however once we got to the base of the couloir and saw that it had quite a bit of avalanche debris at the bottom in combination with a weather forecast that likely wouldn’t soften the snow as much as we’d like, we decided to pivot and ski a different line in Marjorie Bowl. The snow in Kleins still looked cold and powdery so we decided to ski that instead. We skinned up to the ridge that looks over into Arapahoe Basin and continued skinning up the ridge following a skin track that had a lot of ugly looking kick turns that folks had also boot packed through (please don’t boot pack in the skin track!). After a handful of these kick turns, we decided to transition to bootpacking the remainder of the ridge, which ended up being a lot easier than skinning. Strong winds motivated us to keep moving so we made good time to the top of the ridge.
After transitioning, we dropped in. We found that the snow had been somewhat wind affected, but it was edge-able and the snow was still powdery. I really enjoyed this line as the snow was pretty good and the effort to get to it felt very reasonable. It’s a line I’m sure I’ll repeat at some point in the future!
Total Stats: 2.75 miles, 1700 ft of elevation gain
