If you’re in Vail next week for opening day, come by The Sebastian afterwards for Christy’s slideshow. It’s going to be fun. Tickets benefit the Youth Foundation of Vail.
See you all [...]
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 Christy follows the route pioneered by Albert Ellingwood, ninety years ago. Often there was only one way to go along the ridge, which meant we were likely following in his exact footsteps. “…perhaps two miles of interminable pinnacles, sheer on both sides. It was worse than it had looked. Many could be circled on the east side, but many must be taken straight on. Up and down, up and down, over rock that was very slow and called for much care. I got liberal samples of about all the varieties of rock-climbing known– smooth faces, cracks, chimneys, ledges, noses, razor edges and what not. Two or three real nasty stretches held me up for from 5 to 10 minutes each. I pushed steadily and as fast as I could, but slowed up from the weariness as I neared the ridge at the head of the Basin.” -Albert Ellingwood, as recounted in his notes and published in Jeff Arnold’s book, Albert Ellingwood – Scholar of Summits. read more>>>  Approaching the cairn atop Organ. It's not always about the challenge of the peak. We climbed Organ Mountain this past weekend, which at 13,801 feet, is the 106th tallest peak in Colorado. We chose Organ not because Christy and I are now setting out to climb all the top 200 Colorado summits (or Bicentennials), we were just looking for a new place to go, and to come up with ideas we often take a look at the list of Colorado peaks and pick one we haven’t yet climbed. So to Organ we went. Some discredit the notion of ticking summits off the peak list as lacking creativity. Sure, there are some less-than-interesting peaks that get done mostly because they are on the list. But through the years, we’ve found ourselves in countless cool places we may have otherwise never known about, often arriving there because there was a nearby summit we wanted to climb that we learned of from the list. In fact, in just the past few months, Tijeras, Rito Alto, Buckskin Benchmark and Lightning Peak all come to mind as climbs that were pretty memorable outings, and all four peaks happen to reside on the list of Bicentennials. read more>>>  The massive ridge. With the start labeled, we first climbed south to Len Shoemaker Peak and then followed the ridge as it swung north, all the way to Pyramid. Click to enlarge. Totally psyched and somewhat surprised to have actually pulled it off, Neal Beidleman and I sat on Pyramid’s narrow summit in the afternoon sun and processed it all. It wasn’t that we thought it couldn’t be done. Through the years there have been scattered reports of groups completing different sections of this traverse. Our concern had to do with the time and weather. The horseshoe-like ridge is so long, with so much loose, semi-technical terrain to navigate, we didn’t know if there was enough time in the day to cover the ground. Plus, we were in a stormy pattern and it had been raining every afternoon, and we thought it was a good bet that weather would send us fleeing off the ridge before we could complete it. read more>>>  Christy and Dirk in the Southwest Couloir of Peak C. Christy, Dirk and I had a great trip to the Gores recently, and tagged the summit of Peak C, 13,220 ft., described as “the gem of the Gore Range” according to Dave Cooper’s Colorado Scrambles guide. It was an interesting peak and well worth climbing, and I once again wondered why it is that there are so many distinct and aesthetic mountains without more proper names. Christy, not unexpectedly, felt the current designation was just fine, for the obvious reason that she shared the same first initial. read more>>>  Atop Rito Alto Peak, with the Northern Sangre 14ers out to the left, and the Blanca group, in the distance behind. Looking out from the summit of Tijeras Peak the weekend prior, we wondered what the northern end of the 75-mile, snake-like ridge that makes up the Sangres was like. So we decided to make the trip down here for a second weekend in a row, to go check it out. This time, we approached from the west, via the San Luis valley, opting to tag some summits as part of a long trail run/ hike outing. We headed up towards Rito Alto Peak, 13,794 ft., the 110th tallest mountain in the state, along the trail and past the lake that bears its name. We gained the ridge at Hermit Pass, on the spine of the Sangres. An easy hike north put us on Rito Alto’s summit, after which we descended and scampered up Hermit Peak, 13,350 ft., the adjacent peak on the ridge south of the pass. read more>>> |
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