APEX PROPER.........

yo

i did some poking around apex a few days ago. my gf and i drove around behind the ski hill on winters creek fsr. i got within 1.7 km of the apex proper peak, and we did an easy hike from there up the SE side of the mountain to the peak. I was then standing on the south ridge of a bowl that looked pretty damn good. where i stood i was at 7000ft ASL. I'd say 1000' ft of vert to be skied. the south facing and east facing aspects of the bowl have been logged out entirely. i was standing above the north facing aspect so i didnt get a good look at it, but its definitely treed.

the other way to go instead of around the west side of the mountain would be to come from the ski area parking lot straight south down the valley. i'm going to go do this on my next day off, but measuring on google earth, its 3.9 km to the area i described.

so if winters creek fsr is plowed, i'd say thats the way to go, but if its not, less than 4k from apex parking lot is pretty good too. this area might get completely shredded by sledders though.

also, the SW face of Dividend mtn is on the opposite side of the valley, and it looked pretty awesome as well.

check it out on google earth and in the backroad mapbook, if ya feel like it.

Cool thanks.

I would access from the resort, up the ridge from the quad. Would be a easy trek, just needs a lot of snow, heard that there is a decent ski way/ mtn bike trail coming out of the NE drainage back to the resort.

With apex it is all about the snowpack, need to cover those rocks.

so i was up there again yesterday wheeling my car around on the atv trails. i didnt find the return route from apex, but i'm pretty sure i found the trail up the NE side of Dividend, that goes to the top. Unfortunately there was a huge tree across it that i couldnt pull out of the way, and i didnt have a chainsaw, so i turned around.

its funny. i'm pretty sure that the apex peak is improperly marked on the garmin map software. this put me one more bowl south than i wanted to be when i was out there last. that bowl did have a decent looking fsr heading back toward the ski hill though.

anyway, not what you're looking for i know, but one day i'll get out there with enough time to actually hike around a bit, and maybe find the slack return route.