Instead of snaking their way through the exposed, peppered summit, the group rappelled into the line. “We landed on a 55 degree slope with six inches of snow and just rock underneath,” Hinchliffe explains. Hinchliffe then got off rappel, and carried a combined 400 hundred feet of rope across the traverse to the next climbing anchor. “It was pretty nerve racking, that was definitely the scariest part.”

Spot the skier! About halfway down Peg Leg. The skiing was consistently steep and the location can’t be beat! ???? @ballinbu | @rileysod @colterjh @folsomskis @dynafit @oakleyskiing @honeystinger #hshive #goatworthy #liveyours

A photo posted by Jordan White (@jaywsss) on Jun 7, 2015 at 2:23pm PDT

Once back on snow after the next rappel, the slope eased and the three enjoyed solid turns all the way to the final rappel, over an approximately 400-foot cliff. If getting through this final threshold wasn’t tough enough, Hinchliffe suffered a bit of equipment failure.

“I pulled my first ski off to rappel and stuffed it in my bag. Then, when I pulled my second one off, I fumbled it and it fell the rest of the way down the face, over the 400 foot cliff,” he explains. “I was rappelling through this crazy chasm with snow and ice pouring down the whole time, it was pretty exciting in there.”

Hinchliffe found the ski—a little worse for wear, but still functional—once he reached the snow below. Because of that miscue, and an ode to a previous first descent by White and Hinchliffe on Capitol called “The Plank”, the line was dubbed “Peg Leg.”

While Hinchliffe and White have previous experience tackling big objectives like Capitol together, Soderquist was making a go at his first one of this stature.

“This was the first technical ski mountaineering that I think he had ever gotten into,” explains Hinchliffe. “His eyes were wide the whole time but he kept up and he helped us out so much. But this was definitely a bigger surprise for him than it was for us.”

With such a daunting peak already bagged, Hinchliffe plans to lay low for awhile. He’ll still be getting after that spring corn, however. “There will be more adventure skiing, but I don’t think I’m going to get into anything super gnarly again this season. That was enough for one year.”

Related: The completion of the Centennial Peaks Project: A much bigger deal than you think

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