The Citadel aka "Snoopy" (When viewed from the south, The Citadel resembles Snoopy sleeping on his dog house
Cody and I left Golden with plans to climb and ski The Citadel, we choose to approach via Herman gulch given the weekends warm temperatures we wanted to avoid southern aspects which dominate routes when approaching the Citadel from Dry gulch. As we worked our way up Herman gulch we started to notice most aspects had been significantly effected by the freeze thaw cycle of the last several days. Was it going to get warm enough today to soften the crusts? What about northern aspects...had it gotten warm enough at the higher elevations to effect the northern aspects? As we continued we figured we had two good options....1) the NE bowl of the Citadel or 2) the South face of Pettingell Peak. After a couple of hours we were standing in the basin in between Pettingell and Citadel, we opted for Citadel as cloud cover, colder temps and a slight wind rendered south aspects as bullet proof. So we continued over to the lower apron of Citadel's NE bowl, hoping for protected soft snow. Money the snow was soft and the stoke was back! After a quick cat hole we decided to climb to the SE ridge and up to the CItadel. We noticed the strip was in from the summit block, although the strip faces south and thinly covers rock slabs the cooler temps kept the snow firm and made it a viable descent from the summit blocks. Thus we climbed the strip dropped our boards and continued over to scout Snoopy's Backside Chute (NE chute) for later in the spring season. The strip was a rowdy descent on bulletproof snow, however the NE bowl was MONEY the whole way!
The Citadel is the rocky high point left of center. The NE bowl (Snoopy's Tail) starts looks left of the summit