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30 June 2004 - San Luis Peak East Slopes
After work on Tuesday I met up with a friend outside of Bailey at around 2100 and we drove down to the San Juans (fortuitously in separate cars). First target: San Luis. We drove for an endless amount of time (or so it seemed) and finally arrived at the (incredibly remote, at least in the dark) Stewart Creek TH at 0200. Sure enough, there was one person already car camping there.
Three hours of quick sleep, then we were awake and getting ready, and hit the trail at 0600. Unfortunately, an hour and a half up the trail my friend got rather nastily ill and began vomitting and opted to head back not just to the TH, but all the way home. It appeared to be a bug of some sort, not altitude-related (that I could tell). I felt incredibly bad for him having driven all that way for a couple hours or less of hiking. He was cool enough that he urged me to continue on up, so I did.
I summited around 1015, the second person of the day to reach the top (and last from the Stewart Creek side, although I did see a solitary soul pushing up the southeast ridge). There was an inch or two of fresh snow above 13,200', and the wind was of varying degrees of intensity once above the Organ-San Luis saddle - pretty strong and cold on the final ridge up to the summit.
Since it was still early I considered running the ridge over to Organ, but the clouds had been intermittently ominous-looking and I wasn't comfortable with not being able to tell when/if they would start to build for real. That coupled with the snow and the loose class 3 description of the ridge pushed me toward just descending and getting on with my trip. Of course, 30 minutes later the skies were clearing, so I was annoyed. By the time I reached the TH, the real Colorado afternoon weather had moved in - dark clouds and it was sprinkling. I would likely have been off of Organ by then, but who knows.... it will always be there later.
After lunch in Gunnison I headed to Lake City. I planned to meet several Fourteenerworlders at Silver Creek-Grizzly Gulch TH on the 2nd for a climb of Redcloud and Sunshine, but what to do on the day in between?
01 July 2004 - American Pie ("American Peak", Jones Mountain, Niagara Peak) from American Basin
After driving up to Cinnamon Pass and taking in the sights and the cold wind, I drove back down to the 4WD parking in American Basin. My plan for day two was: Handies, then traverse to Roach's "American Pie" route (or variant thereof). After a night of cold, broken sleep I awoke at 0500 I but was motivationally challenged and didn't actually hit the trail until 0645. I decided that I would hit American Pie first since that would take me farthest from my vehicle - on the return in the afternoon I'd be closer to the trailhead if storms came in. If no storms, I could do Handies when I came back. In hindsight, that was the wrong decision because there were no storms but I was pretty tired when I came back and didn't feel up to doing Handies.
I hiked up the trail into American Basin and worked my way up to the base of Independence Couloir on American's north/northeast face. I was wary of climbing this route as it started getting sunhit really early - at sunup - and it was 0830 when I finally got to the base of it. Some of the route was still shaded by the surrounding towers, it wasn't too tall, and I didn't hear too much rockfall, so I put on the crampons and off I went. It took me about 40 minutes to ascend the ~600 feet of the couloir. The last fifty feet or so were completely melted out and nothing more than nasty loose talus. Even being as cautious as I could I ended up sending a few rocks down. I called them out of habit, even though I knew there was nobody else on the route...
Traversed over to the summit of American by about 10AM. Big surprise, I was there by myself. The last person to sign the register was Sean Cunniff, although I made out a few tracks in some of the mud on the traverse that looked like they might be slightly more recent. Spent a few minutes on the summit eating and dreading how far away Niagara looked, then returned back down the ridge to the American-Jones saddle. The scramble up Jones' NE ridge is, in my opinion, rather unpleasant. Lots of scree-on-rock stuff. I was not looking forward to descending it. It took me a slow hour and a half to make the ~1 mile traverse from the summit of American to the summit of Jones. Rested and ate on Jones for a bit, then started off toward Niagara. Descending toward the Niagara-Jones saddle I saw two people ascending toward the saddle from Burns Gulch - the only people I had seen or would see for hours. I did not catch them, unfortunately; they reached the saddle and were up and over Niagara probably 15 minutes before I got there.
About halfway down from the summit of Jones I began getting air bubbles in my water tube, causing me concern that I was almost out of water and might have to retreat. Fortunately I deemed that I had enough to continue, but probably didn't have extra for extended side trips.
When I finally reached the summit of Niagara, I was surprised that those folks were not there - until I looked out and saw them heading over toward Crown Mountain. Given my water situation I figured it wasn't a good idea for me to follow them.
Traversed back over Jones - found a trail most of the way, but the lower bits on the NE ridge were as bad as I had expected - and trekked out to intersect with American's west face route for a glissade down those wide, gentle snow slopes. Except as I'm hiking out the ridge I look down and see some small slide paths where the snow in the path is still bright white - recent. Not good! Another one on the far west side of the slope! Without outrageously lengthening the hike I have to descend snow somewhere to get off of American. Fortunately, from above it looked like they had likely been triggered by rockfall, and where I was going to descend was not below any towers. I eventually went to the western-most slope below the saddle (but east of the small slide there) and glissaded down the slope - I wanted to spend as little time on the slope as possible. Made it down and began the slog back to the truck.
Being low on water I didn't try for Handies. Drove to Lake City for some lunch. After getting some food I considered an evening/night climb of Handies (nearly full moon), but figured that would leave me in pretty poor shape for....
02 July 2004 - Redcloud and Sunshine Peaks
Again up at 0500, planned to meet other FWers at Silver Creek-Grizzly Gulch TH at 0600. They arrived early and we were on the trail a few minutes before 0600. We walked up the trail toward what I would later christen "The Grays and Torreys of the San Juans". I walked significantly slower than the rest given my 40 pounds of gear (quick, someone define masochism!), but following Redcloud's Northeast Ridge even I made it to the summit in just over 3.5 hours. We traversed over to Sunshine and had the summit to ourselves for about 15-20 minutes before the next person showed up. Our group split up on the descent, Jon Frolich and I being the insane freaks who saw the sign at the Redcloud-Sunshine saddle that says "Do not descend here" and immediately thought "Hey, let's descend here!" Roach lists it as a route (28.4, Sunshine North Slopes), how bad can it be?
Ask a stupid question...
He says this makes a good snow climb. I hope so, because it flat-out, in-no-uncertain-terms SUUUUUCKS when it's dry. Think Scree Col on Sneffels' standard route... this is competitive. In case I'm not being clear, and in case you choose to ignore the sign at the saddle warning you not to descend this way: DO NOT DESCEND THIS ROUTE WHEN IT IS NOT SNOW-COVERED! It is more direct than traversing back over Redcloud, but it's so tedious that you'll be going so slow you won't save much time.
After descending that hell, we hiked a quarter mile or so across the talus/rock glacier and finally made it back down to treeline and began descending the trail as it parallels the South Fork of Silver Creek.
Shortly below treeline we crossed the fading snow remains of avalanche debris that had presumably run down the northernmost gully on Redcloud's west face. Trees were destroyed on both sides of the slope but no obvious chute from where we stood. A couple hundred yards down the trail we look back and see a wide swath through the trees that could give a run of thousands of feet... all the way from the summit of Redcloud. That slide must have been gigantic... it could have dropped several thousand feet, and we literally saw debris from it scattered all the way down to the intersection with Silver Creek. It was very impressive and sobering. Ascending this route in the winter would be asking for trouble...
After getting back to the TH, we went into Lake City for a leisurely lunch and the others decided to go for Wetterhorn the next day instead of heading over to Sneffels. I contemplated stopping off to hit Handies on the way back over Cinnamon Pass, but once again I opted to pass in deference to getting to Ouray in time to get food and a room (I was in need of a shower). So after lunch I bid farewall to Jon, Laura, and Leo and headed over Cinnamon Pass...
When I had arrived and secured my lodging in Ouray I tried to contact my FW climbing partner for Sneffels - Jim Wise. I called the place where he was staying and was told there were no phones in the rooms. I cursed the decision to meet at the TH at 0500...
03 July 2004 - Mt Sneffels Southwest Ridge
Driving up the road in the pre-dawn hours I met Jim and we drove up to the trailhead. Although I have a 4WD, reference my earlier statement regarding masochism. So we started up from the 2WD trailhead at about 0530. I felt incredibly slow this day (a couple bites of granola doesn't really qualify as breakfast), but Jim was pretty good-natured about it. We debated choices of routes and finally settled on the Southwest Ridge. Including miscellaneous stops and so forth it took us about 2.5 hours to make it to Blue Lakes Pass at 13000'.
After a break at the pass during which we watched an incredibly brave pika come and nibble harmlessly at my pack, we eventually set on up the ridge. The first obstacle we hit was a snowfield. Being on the west side of the ridge, they were still sheltered from the sun. Numerous kicks were able to get just a small enough step to stand on gingerly. I had crampons but Jim didn't, so it didn't make sense for me to cross somewhere that he couldn't, and I decided I wouldn't use them. We were able to climb to the rocks at the top and climb/scramble through the moat between the head of the snowfield and the rock towers.
A short time later we saw a cairn lead up into a little notch that was suffering from a case of alpine ice; with no crampons, I judged continuing that way too risky so we descended a bit and circled around to a wider area just to the left of it and climbed up the snow and over some 4th-class terrain to get back on-route.
A short time later we hit an apparent impasse: descending into the large notch at 13500'. Around to the left of a large pinnacle was steep, impassable rock; our only option was descending a steep but small snowfield into a side gully and descending that into the main gully. Resigned to having no other option short of retreat, I got a good self-belay and facing in I slowly downclimbed and kicked steps into the softening snow for 20-30 feet until I could step off onto rock and dirt. Instead of descending this side gully all the way into the main gully we climbed out of it and followed some cairns through 4th-class terrain to avoid descending any further. Despite being somewhat east-facing, the snow in the large main gully was still pretty hard, but we were able to kick "workable" steps in or to move up partly on rock on the south wall.
Climbing out of the main gully through the the upper south-facing gully we again ran into some alpine ice and Jim pulled some lower-5th-class moves on the rock to bypass it. His route was a little beyond my comfort level with a 35 pound pack on, so I looked around and found a 4th-class route around the ice and up onto a small ramp. Once past that, the next notable obstacle was a small shallow "chimney" or chute that is probably class 2 or easy 3 when dry but was filled with ice and required some easy stemming on the rock on the sides to pass. If memory serves, this was where you cut over to the east side of the ridge. Most of the "difficulties" were over and we just had to deal with the class 3 rock for another 500-600 feet or so to the summit, which proved relatively little challenge.
We arrived at the summit an unbelievable three hours after starting the ridge, for a blistering pace of ~300 feet/hour on the ridge. Most of that time was spent below 13,500'; it probably only took us 45 minutes to an hour, if that, to do the last 600 feet. Routefinding and maneuvering around snowfields and ice is what took the majority of our time.
Those heading out for this route soon should go prepared for some ice and hard snow and route finding to skirt around them. You'll want an axe, but you can get by - cautiously - without crampons. I was glad I had mine available even though I chose not to use them...
With the addition of the hard snow and ice, this route was probably the most demanding route I've climbed. While not technically difficult - more tedious - it combined several disciplines I hadn't used together significantly before. Definitely expanded my horizons a bit, and the challenge was enjoyable...
For those who may be interested, while we were on the summit a couple of guys topped out from the Snake Couloir and said it is "almost out"...
I was fortunate to have several consecutive days of amazing weather, especially after the last couple of weeks' display of moisture and early storms. And after last year's lack of motivation to go climbing, it's glad to have that back... |
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