14,156' 14 August 95, (Southwest of Aspen) Climbing for the Griffith' s Center Corporate Peak Challenge Who: Steve Parker, Kirt Schumann, and Dave Hostetter. Total Distance: ~ 10 miles, exactly 12 hours Total Elevation: ~4,500 feet (but it felt more like 10,000!)
Well, having seen the Maroon Bells up close for an aborted attempt to climb Pyramid (due to early fall snow last year), and in countless calendars and pictures around here, I thought this would be a good climb for a good cause. I had heard it was somewhat difficult, but definitely wasn't prepared for what was to come. But I digress.
StorageTek's company picnic was Saturday, August 12, at Elitches Garden. Dave and I planned on leaving there at 6:00pm, pick up Kirt at Kermitt's (just below Idaho Springs) and drive up to Aspen. It turned out that things got so hot down on the Plains that Dave and I decided to leave early. We jumped in the truck and headed for the hills at 3pm.
We paged Kirt, and got him on his way from Nederland to Kermitt's (at the bottom of Floyd Hill), where we met him and took off. We got into Aspen about 7:30, had a good mexican dinner, and headed up to the Maroon Bells campground, where we planned on sleeping in the truck in the upper parking lot. Unfortunately this was all roped off, as they needed the lot for the Mountain Rescue Helicopter that would be working on Sunday. Apparently a fairly experienced climber had a rock ledge collapse out from under him last Friday on the way up to North Maroon, and fell couple hundred feet. The "Deadly Bells" had claimed another victim.
It rained pretty hard most of the night Saturday, and when we woke up at 5:00, the cloud cover was fairly thick. As we packed up and got ready to go, the clouds started breaking up, and it was turning into a nice day.
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We left the upper lot at 6:10am, and headed for Crater Lake and beyond. We'd read another trip report that said they took an hour and a half to get to the point on the ridge where you start climb, so when we made it in an hour, we felt pretty good (an omen???). There were an unbelievable number of Columbines on this trip, with other flowers of all types blooming like crazy. Reviewing the map now, I find that we turned up the ridge line just when the trail crosses to the east of Maroon Creek (at about 10,500), and started straight up. |
This section of the climb was tough, and definitely what you do NOT want to do for your first fourteener of the summer, like us. It climbs roughly straight up from 10,500 to 13,300 in just under a mile. It's all either wet grass (from last nights rain), talus, or snow. It was pretty tough going, and it took us about three hours to reach the ridgeline. Falling/sliding rocks are a constant problem here. As you reach ridge line, you get a spectacular view of the Snowmass valley and everything around there. You also get a good view of what's to come...
Both Roach and Bourneman are quick to point out that rock around here is loose and rotten, and I can only say they understate this point. Things that look stable just pull free when you grab them, causing the ever persistent loose rock problem. Mix this with trying to follow the cairns on small ledges to the west, beneath some of the higher points on the ridge, and it was a fairly treacherous, tedious, and long 1/2 mile to the summit. Not to mention you climb up, then down, then up again. This is the part where it feels like you add 5,000 vertical feet to the climb, even though I'm sure it's no more than 500 to 1,000, if that. We did exactly what both authors told us not to, though, and went over the top of point 13,753, and had to drop down a very steep 75 feet to a saddle, and then back up to the peak itself. If you can avoid it, do. Stay low until the final climb (although it's VERY difficult to figure out exactly where this is). At the time of our trip, there were a series of cairns wrapped in orange flourescent flagging that seemd to mark the most used trail, although there are cairns everywhere that can easily distract you.
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We "peaked" at about 12:30pm, after 6 1/2 hours of difficult climbing, to find one lone hiker at the top. We sat and talked for a couple minutes, looking at the rather ominous buildup of black clouds over the Snowmass area. We got out the StorageTek banner for "Peak Challenge" pictures, and I walked off towards North Maroon to take pictures of the knife edge between the two peaks. As I was reaching for my camera, I realized that all my hair was standing on end, including the hair on my arms. Knowing exactly what this sensation meant, I didn't even take the picture. I yelled back up to Kirt, we hastily threw everything in the packs, put on our hats, and hauled butt out of there. Meanwhile, the guy who we originally ran into was just kicking back, apparently unconcerned by this latest chain of events. |
We were moving fairly fast back off the top and ran into two other groups on their way up. We told them about what happened, but they wanted to at least get up there (as would we, after that much effort). Dave started complaining about a "buzzing sound" and his hair started doing the same thing, so we told him to put on his hat, and we started moving just a little faster.
We made another bad judgement here, in our haste to get off the mountain. Looking at the saddle we came up through, we tried to angle for it, rather than quickly dropping down to the west a couple hundred feet or so and follow the ledges around. We got ourselves in a rather tight spot by staying on the high side, and ended up having to down-climb one fairly intense 50 foot, near-vertical drop. If it hadn't been for the lightning, we definitely would have turned around and gone back to where the drop was a little less precarious.
By this time, we'd been above 13,000 feet for almost three hours, and starting to feel a little sick. Add this to the difficulty of the walk out, the unnerving down-climb, the storm getting much closer, the boomers getting a little louder, and the fact that we knew we had another hour to go before starting the real part of the descent. We were supposed to be having fun, but were starting to verbalize very colorful metaphors to describe what we thought of ourselves for deciding to climb this as our first 14er of the season.
We made it back to the saddle just as the storm started passing overhead. Luckily, it wasn't one of the infamous "upside down lake" type storms that can happen, but it was light hail and rain. This made the descent down the slope very treacherous, as the rocks were wet, the dirt was wet, and the grass was wet. We easily found the trail that was virtually invisible from below, and started down, having to sidestep virtually the entire mountain. I can't even begin to tell you how many times we slipped and fell on the wet rocks/grass. It took us about the same amount of time to make this descent as it took us to get up there in the first place (~3 hours).
During the descent, the search and rescue helicopter kept running search patterns around the north-south ridge line, descending about 200 feet with every "loop". We thought perhaps one of the people behind us on the climb had slipped in the wet rock on the ridge line, but we later found out that they were looking for a doctor who had disappeared on August 3rd.
By the bottom of the mile long descent on these steep slopes, ankles hurt, toes were jammed into the end of boots, and knees were shaking. It was almost euphoric to finally reach Maroon Creek, where the walking was fairly level. By this time, we'd been out for 10.5 hours non-stop (we only took about 10 minutes for a half-lunch on the ridgeline).
The walk back to Maroon was done in near silence, walking like robots most of the way. What seemed like small bumps in the trail (20 feet vertical), now became a real pain in the legs.
We arrived back at the trailhead (the upper lot at Maroon Lake) at 6:08pm, within two minutes of 12 hours since we had left.
Needless to say, the four hour drive back to Nederland/Boulder went by rather quickly, as I think we slept through most of it. If we had known that the walk would have taken 12 hours, I know we would stayed in Glenwood Springs, sleeping in the mineral pools.
Even now as I sit here, two days later, my quads feel detached from my knees, and my toes still hurt from being jammed into the front of my boots.
But... it was (and always will be) worth it. The views were spectacular, the wildflowers were beautiful, and the colorful metaphors have died away into comments like "it was the hardest, most difficult climb I've ever done in my life, but worth it".
I just can't wait to see the pictures..
Steve ============================================================================= Steve Parker Disclaimer - These opiini^H^H damn! ^H^H ^Q ^[ .... :w :q :wq :wq! ^d X ^? exit X Q ^C ^? :quitbye CtrlAltDel ~~q :~q logout save/quit :!QUIT ^[zz ^[ZZZZZZ ^H man vi ^ ^L ^[c ^# ^E ^X ^I ^T ? help helpquit ^D ^d man help ^C ^c help exit ?Quit ?q CtrlShftDel"Hey, what does this button d..."
