Trip Report - Ice Mountain and North Apostle, August 28-29, 1999
Ice Mountain, reputed to be one of the tougher Centennials at 13,951 feet, is located near Huron Peak northwest of Buena Vista. Ice Mountain is the center peak of the Three Apostles which are on the Continental Divide. The Apostles tower over the beautiful cirque below, which includes a large tarn at the base of Ice Mountain. The tarn is the source of the South Fork of Clear Creek. Several unique rock spires on the North Apostle ridge add to the grandeur of the cirque. One guidebook described the rugged Apostles as similar to the Crestones - we agreed. >From US 24 north of Buena Vista, the Clear Creek road is a well graded freeway that passes the Vicksburg trailhead (Belford/Oxford, Missouri, Harvard, and Columbia) and ends at Winfield. From Winfield, a fairly rough 4WD road takes you two miles south to the trailhead for Huron and the Apostles. There are many established camping areas near the trailhead; several large sites were used by the CFI last year for trail reconstruction on Huron.
Doug Hill, Bob Reimann and I arrived at the trailhead in a steady rain Saturday afternoon at 1430. We slogged 1.5 hours through the rain approximately 2.5 miles and 1,000 vertical feet to campsites at treeline. There was only one other tent in the basin. The rain stopped shortly before we arrived at camp, and we were blessed with a dry evening and clear night sky.
The trail shown on the Trails Illustrated topo is incorrect. Hiking south from the TH, you follow a well established trail past the Hamilton townsite to a fork in the trail. Stay to the left and do not follow the Lake Ann Trail branch (as indicated by the Trails Illustrated topo). Within 100 yards, you reach another fork in the trail. Take a sharp right turn on the trail which immediately drops down and crosses a stream. A tree at this fork has a large blaze cut in it with carved arrows pointing to your right. In the center of the blaze is carved "3-A" with an arrow below it. Note that this trail is well established, easy to follow, but not shown on the USGS Winfield topo (although clearly shown on the Trails Illustrated topo heading south on the west side of the South Fork of Clear Creek). This trail, with blazes, has obviously been in use for many years and takes you to treeline without routefinding or bushwhacking problems. However, when leaving camp to return to the TH, we did have to wander around for a few minutes to relocate this trail we had hiked in on. We were greeted Sunday morning by light fog over the Divide and clear skies. There are very light trails and you're pretty much on your own to choose a route to the saddle at 13,460 between North Apostle and Ice Mountain. This approach is described in Garrett and Martin's guidebook. In addition to posted emails last year by CMC members, another source of information on Ice Mountain was discovered under Apostles (or Ice Mountain) at http://net.indra.com/~stevep/CRMTR/CRMTR-Main.html <http://net.indra.com/~stevep/CRMTR/CRMTR-Main.html> . Descriptions of Ice Mountain indicated boilerplate ice blocking access to a final couloir and the summit. We carried crampons and ice axes to camp, but decided to take only ice axes and helmet on the summit climb. We picked a route up the basin to the saddle by traversing grassy "ledges" between rocks and boulder fields.
From the saddle, North Apostle is a straightforward scramble up the ridge about 400 vertical feet. We left camp at 0615 and summited North Apostle at 0930. The guidebooks rightfully recommend carefully studying the ridgeline from the saddle to Ice Mountain to try and figure out a route. The ridgeline is intimidating steep and cut with several vertical couloirs. One large couloir, which we never encountered, still contained an ice/snowfield. We were concerned about the fog which covered and then dissipated from the ridgeline and discussed our odds of being able to attempt climbing Ice Mountain. Actually, I think we were apprehensive about the difficulty of the route! We decided to start up the ridge and see what the weather would hold for us - and to test the difficulty of the route. The route has faintly defined braided trails and a few cairns to provide a guide (maybe a bad route?). The route was steep and difficult 3+ and 4 climbing in many sections, but went fairly well with moderate routefinding and luck. We crossed a couloir and climbed the next one which appeared to lead us upward past difficult areas. Water was slowly flowing down some of the steep, polished rock sections which may be the infamous boilerplate ice earlier in the season. We encountered no ice or snowfields during the climb. The crux was finding a route up through the steep rock sections below the summit. A lot of the rock was loose and hand and foot holds had to be tested before committing to them. We were glad to be wearing climbing helmets to protect against the infrequent rockfall, being as careful as possible not to dislodge the loose stuff. Twice I raised up under overhanging rock and was very glad to have the protection on my head. We tried climbing a chimney but found it too difficult. Traversing further to our right, we climbed up the steep 5.1-5.2 crux which was about 30-40 feet of desperate hand and footholds with significant exposure (not freefall but steep rock that would cause serious injury before coming to a stop or self-arrest!). Doug Hill and I later agreed that that section was the hardest we had climbed without pro and a rope. We summited at 1130, two hours after leaving the North Apostle summit. After enjoying the hard won Ice Mountain summit for a few minutes, we proceeded down to hopefully avoid the persistent afternoon rain and/or thunderstorms. We found a slightly easier section to downclimb, with a lot of traversing the difficult couloir, and returned by the route we had climbed. Rather than regaining the saddle, we traversed over endless boulders and scree down to the cirque we had climbed and a similar route back across the grassy ledges and eventually back to camp at 1500. Some distant thunder threatened, but other than a short, light rain, we enjoyed clear, sunny weather. We were the only people on the mountain the entire day. We packed up the tents and our gear and hiked back out to the TH arriving at 1730. We were quite tired, stopped in Buena Vista for dinner, and arrived back in Denver at 2000.
Ice Mountain is a majestic peak in a beautiful cirque with difficult routefinding and climbing. We were all exhausted and felt fortunate to have climbed both summits and have accomplished the difficult climbing on Ice Mountain. It was a classic mountaineering adventure! In adverse weather, it would certainly be extremely challenging, if not impossible to climb. We carried a 100 foot length of 6 mm prusik rope which Bob used once to downclimb a very steep, precarious area (he then could see an easier downclimb where Doug and I could exit). We rigged the rope around a split in the rock where someone in the past had slung a sling and rappelled down the steep section. A rope would be wise insurance for climbing Ice Mountain, especially if anyone in the group is not confident on very steep, difficult 5.1-5.2 pitches or if the weather is anything other than generally ide
al.
This is a rather long trip report, but I wanted to share this magnificent area and our successful adventure! Happy routefinding!
Doug Cook 09/01/99