Monthly Archives: May 2000

Mount Guyot

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After a failed attempt on Cathedral Peak due to very deep snow and awful weather, we decided to attempt an easier mountain, one that would allow us a fairly good chance of success. We chose Mount Guyot near Georgia Pass. During the summer time, you can drive all the way up to Georgia Pass at 11,585 and the hike then becomes a stiff climb up Guyot’s east ridge. We were wondering how far up we would be able to drive. It turned out that we got to within 2.5 miles of the pass when the road became barricaded by deep snow. That was perfectly fine with us since the hike became your average 6 miles, 2500 foot elevation gain snow hike. That seemed a little more reasonable than a quick hike up a ridge that started right at tree line.

We put on our snowshoes and headed up the road. We were wondering if we should bother bringing our ice axes since Guyot is normally a very easy hike. We opted to be safe rather than sorry. We didn’t hike very long until the road made a giant switch back. We decided to then bypass the road and head straight up valley and make our own route to Georgia Pass. We ended up saving a decent amount of distance this way. It wasn’t hard at all to find our way through the trees and up to the pass, although we did have to climb about 150 feet up a fairly steep snow slope. At Georgia Pass we took a break and had some food then headed up. 

We were planning on making a circuit and climbing down one of the south ridges on the peak (on the east side of the big southern cirque) so we lashed our snowshoes on to our packs and headed up the talus strewn ridge. We lost our perception of how high we were and came over a false summit and saw that we had a lot longer way to go. The ridge continued up then turned north and headed for the snowy summit. Thank goodness for the ice axes. Eventually, we were in front of the final snow pitch up a fairly steep snow ridge. We left our snowshoes here and headed up. The snow was in perfect condition for kick-stepping and not using crampons. As we were heading up, we noticed the weather worsening in the distance. Although it was fairly still on the ridge, it looked blustery and rainy in the distance. On top, the wind picked up and we paused only for an instance to take pictures.

On the way down, we picked up our snowshoes and headed for the split in the east ridge which led to our chosen descent route. There turned out to be a giant snowfield perfect for glissading so we quickly slid down about 1200 feet of elevation. Another great glissade! Last spring, the best glissades were on Buffalo, Hagar, and Apache peaks. This was definitely second best behind Buffalo (I doubt and glissade will be able to top Buffalo). Anyway, we were down into the valley in no time and enjoyed a pleasant hike out. At one point, Ken was crossing a stream and his right snowshoe popped through and got stuck in the running water. I had to haul him out. Very funny moment.

Mount Sheridan, Mount Sherman, Gemini Peak

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From Leavick

This was my second climb of Mount Sherman and therefore the first fourteener that I’ve ever repeated. Ken needed to climb it in pursuit of climbing all the Colorado fourteeners so I decided to go along. We also were planning on climbing Mount Sheridan and Gemini Peak on either side of Mount Sherman. We were able to drive up the Leavick road quite a way. The scenery around this mountain is so much more bland than other places in Colorado. The only reason to climb here is to take care of Mount Sherman or to train in off-seasons for other peaks.
 
We started off by hiking towards Mount Sheridan. We hiked into a small basin between Sherman and Sheridan. The only colors present were an off-brown and white, very bland indeed. We started up the fairly gentle slopes of Mount Sheridan and then moved onto a snow slope that turned out to be moderately steep. But we made quick time and arrived on the top of Mount Sheridan. At the west end of the summit is a large cairn. We took a break here, ate a little bit, identified Sawatch mountains and then headed out to Mount Sherman. 
 
I had been talking about how cool the ridge was on Mount Sherman, especially with snow. Well, it turned out that there was much less snow this year, and we were even 3 weeks before the time that I had done it a couple of years prior. So, the ridge wasn’t much of an exciting climb. It was mostly gravel. Still, it was enjoyable. We made it on top without any problems. I had decided that I wanted to go on to Gemini but Ken wasn’t really into it. I told him he could wait for me here and then he decided to go along. We decided to hike as fast as we could to Gemini. It only took us about 15-20 minutes to reach the summit. The summit is actually only about a 150 foot climb. Why this is a named peak, I have no idea. But, we bagged it and took our picture on the top. Then we headed back over Mount Sherman. Climbing Gemini so fast had apparently sapped us as the hike back over Sherman was grueling. We met some other climbers who were decked out as if they were climbing K2. They had on crampons, ice tools, protection, ropes, all sorts of stuff. Why they needed that gear on this mountain, I have no idea. They said they climbed White Ridge, but still! Talk about overkill.

After eating a short lunch, we hiked back down the Sherman/Sheridan saddle and decided to glissade. We discovered, however, that the eastern slopes were blocked by a cornice. That didn’t stop us though (although I was a bit scared). The cornices were in no danger of breaking off so we planted our ice axes in the base, and scooted over the edge, got secure, removed our ice axes and zipped down. It was a short fast glissade. Another good one after the awesome one on Castle Peak.  We passed by a couple of old mines and then were outta there.

Castle Peak ,Conundrum Peak

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Northeast spur face and northeast ridge

Castle Peak was the first major peak of the spring for Ken and I.  We had been planning on climbing Castle Peak early in the season so we could take advantage of the reputed long glissade from the saddle between Castle Peak and it’s neighboring un-official fourteener, Conundrum Peak.  This was to be my earliest spring ascent of a fourteener, but there was much less snow on this trips than on virtually all of my other trips that I had taken over Memorial Day, nearly one month away!

I arrived at work before 6am this morning so I could work a full day and leave at 2pm to meet Ken at his apartment.  The day started out kind of hectic because he had to replace some engine coolant and was unable to remove the oil cap from the engine!  We ended up leaving around 3pm and had to drive all the way to Glennwood Springs and work our way backwards since Independence Pass was still closed.
 
We were able to drive up pretty far up the Castle Creek road.  The trailhead officially starts at the dirt turnoff but we made it past this about a mile or two to the first stream crossing.  It wasn’t the stream that stopped us, but the snow that covered the road pretty much the rest of the way up.  We decided to park, pack-up and head out.  I said to Ken, “Well, let me give you the tent poles to carry…” then I suddenly realized that I had forgotten the tent poles!  I was so mad at myself.  I had gotten them out, laid them next to my stuff and left them.  After a bit of initial panic, we decided to go on.  Fortunately, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky so we decided we would try sleeping out under the stars.  I had done this before but Ken never had.  So, we started hiking up the road.  After a mere five minutes, we were punching through the snow, getting snow in our boots and getting very frustrated.  To add insult to injury (and injury as well), I stepped on a loose rock and tumbled a few feet down the road embankment, sliding into a tree and bashing my left knee.  D’oh!  This was certainly not a good introduction to the 2000 hiking season!

After reigning in my frustration, I gave us a pep talk about how we should go on and learn to persevere, etc.  So we went on.
 
Thank goodness we did continue.  We put on our snowshoes and hiked another 15-30 minutes and found a nice campsite along the road with a pre-build fire ring.  We stopped there, laid out the tarp (it didn’t require poles – ha ha) and set up our bags.  I scouted around a little bit with the map, getting my bearings while Ken gathered firewood.  Pretty soon, he had an awesome fire going.  We spent the next couple of hours talking and enjoying the fire.  We turned in around 9 or 9:30 and slept hard.

At around 4am, I was awakened by some climbers hiking up the road past us.  We slept for another 1.5 or 2 hours then packed up and headed out.

The initial part of the hike was easy.  We just followed the road up heading towards Montezuma Basin.  Pretty soon, we came upon a hut.  We continued on then suddenly were looking down a valley with the east face of Castle in view.  I realized that we had gone the wrong way.  Fortunately, the turn that we missed was only about 10 minutes behind us.  We quickly retraced our steps and headed up.

As we got above the treeline, we saw the face that led up to the northeast ridge of Castle Peak.  It looked like a long snow climb so we decided to blaze a new (well maybe not new, but certainly rare) route up the mountain.  In the photo to the left, you can see Ken hiking up the lower portion of the route.
 
As we got near the crest of the ridge, the climb got really steep, about 50 degrees and the snow got really hard.  I’m very comfortable on rock but being on slippery surfaces just make me nervous.  I was about to back down and traverse to some rocks but Ken said he would chop some steps into the snow since we were so close.  He did and I followed up.  It wasn’t nearly as scary with a big foothold.  Still, I was very careful and planted my ice axe deeply in the snow before taking a step.  In retrospect, this was a bit foolish to attempt without crampons.  We won’t make that mistake again.

We finally crested the ridge and for the first time saw the remainder of our route.  The rest of the route was easy but was annoyingly loose.  This mountain is probably much more fun in springtime than summer because most of the loose stuff is thankfully glued together with snow.

About 45 minutes later, I was really close to the top, climbing along a thin snow ridge.   Then we made it.  To the right is a picture of Ken arriving on the summit.
 
Climbing Castle was really fun and rewarding, especially after that spooky section on hard snow.  We zipped down the other side and headed for Conundrum.  Conundrum isn’t considered a separate fourteener because there’s not much drop between the two mountains.  Indeed it should not be considered a separate mountain.  It didn’t take us any time to arrive at the top.  Conundrum is a long ridge and it’s hard to tell where the true summit is.  According to the map (and location of the summit register), it’s the first point, however we went passed that, over the Conundrum couloir and on to the second point as well.  Then we headed back and glissaded about 800 feet down the Montezuma snowfield.  It was a good glissade – very long, but not too terribly fast.

It didn’t take us very long to arrive back at camp.  We just threw our gear in our packs without any consideration of efficient packing techniques and headed out.  We arrived back at the truck 15-20 minutes later.