Quick report
Two of us went up for a late season trip to the summit via avalanche gulch with the plan to ski down from Red Banks. Travel is dry rock up to helen lake, with consistent snow coverage starting at 10,500 ft. While it may be theoretically possible to skin disconnected patches of the gulley up to helen lake, its not worth your time and effort. Significant rockfall hazard exists in the gulley and at this point in the season there is essentially no way to safely mitigate risk. We made camp at helen lake, and had a long conversation about the risks associated with the route. Ultimately, we chose to still climb the traditional route to climbers right of the heart but would not recommend this to others. We left helen lake at 2:30 AM moving quickly on the firm sun-cupped snow/ice and were at the top of Red Banks a little after 4 AM where we left our skis. We did not note any rockfall in the pre-dawn hours; however, this could very well occur during any climb attempt at any point in the day. There is still a clear snow path through Red Banks to the base of Misery hill. Misery hill up to the summit plateau is snow free. Summit plateau is holding firm sun-cupped snow. After summitting we made our way back to the top of Red Banks and waited until around noon, hoping the snow would soften up. While we initially had hoped to ski down the main face or chutes beneath the ridge, our recon from the top showed that these faces were also deeply sun cupped and essentially impossible to ski. We ended up keeping our skis on our backs until the base of Red Banks and then started a thousand feet of painful side slipping on hard bands of razor thin, "rail"-like sun cups. During this time we observed a handful of rocks tumbling down on the other side of the gulch. As experienced skiers including a former patroller we would not recommend this to our worst enemy. The ~1000 ft above helen lake and discontinuous patches of the gulley down to ~8500 ft were still skiable and even "fun" in certain sections. Deep pits from rockfall impact above Helen lake and exposed rock in the gulley presented clear hazards that were time challenging to safely avoid. All told we probably got close to 3000 ft of real skiing on crusty sections, but even the most snow-starved out there this Summer would be hard-pressed to find this a worthwhile trip to undertake. We have now significantly passed the window of ski travel being worthwhile on avalanche gulch. Any travel on this route presents significant rockfall risk and we would strongly recommend other approaches. Firm, late season conditions