Flattop Mountain - S side 

After a week of good settlement in March '05 we snowboarded this north west facing couloir from 12,200 directly to about 11,000 ft. We tried to go back and snowboard it again in May, but the weather never softened the couloir up, so we bailed east along the top of Flattop to a northeast couloir at 12,000 down to about 10,800. This area offers excellent ski/snowboard mountaineering, but the wind and snow conditions are fickle.

Nice post Joel. .. My wife and I climbed the pictured gully on 6.18.05. It turned out to be a fun moderate snow climb to the summit of Flattop. I believe the route is described as West Couloir in Rossiter's RMNP guide. Straight forward approach, breaking off the Fern Lake trail at the junction with Notchtop and heading SW towards lake Helen and the obvious Ptarmigan glacier. The gully comes into view to the South shortly after passing Lake Helene, just East of the prominent snow fields. The climb followed an interesting gully on 40-50 degree snow, steepening to high 50s at the top. We didn't encounter any alpine ice as it was still pretty filled in with snow.

As a sidenote, looked like there were still some nice turns to be had in Notchtop couloir as viewed directly North of our position :)

I think "high 50s might be an overstatement. An accurate inclonometer reading might be helpful! Like penis length, slope angles are usually over estimated.