Saturday was a ridiculously beautiful day here. It dawned a little cold, but the winds never really picked up and the skies were bluebird, even up above Georgetown which is apparently famous for being windy. The pic above is nowhere near where we were, but I wanted a graphic and that's pretty much what it looked like from the vista point near the summit...
We CMCers gathered at the bottom of the road and began the trek up, which seemed a lot longer on the way down, actually. I had no idea we'd covered so many switchbacks until we had to descend them. There was a nasty piece of thick, treacherous sheet ice clear across the jeep road near the bottom that pulled one guy's feet right out from under him. It continues to amaze me how slippery ice can be. We passed some old mining detritus and the remains of some tumble-down shacks.
After a couple of hours of that we reached the top of the switchback section, and donned snowshoes, only to take them off about 200 yards later, put them back on 300 yards up the road from there, take them back off in another 300 yards...
We finally said screw it and just gingerly picked our way through the bare rocks and sections of bare dirt. Soon enough we were slogging (first tracks, dude! only in heavy wet snow--yuck) through this awesome sugary mess and by awesome I mean not awesome at all. I got my turn at the front breaking trail about 3 minutes before we got to a junction of a road where snow cats had come up from Idaho Springs and tamped it all down--I couldn't believe how heavy it was, just a few inches on my snowshoes as they sank into that morass of depth hoar so prevalent in Colorado. I can see what big, scary avalanches it can cause--your basic nightmare, and I understand why Bruce Tremper characterized it as "guilty until proven innocent." My other favorite quote about depth hoar from Canadian avalanche specialist Clair Isrealson:
"Depth hoar is like having your crazy aunt come for a visit. She stays forever and you just never know when she's going to snap."
Anyway, we weren't in avy terrain, so no worries that day--although you could definitely see cracks and shearing in the snowpack when we stepped on it, even on pretty flat surfaces in spots. We finally reached the almost top where the road ended at a vista point complete with half-buried picnic table and BBQ. There was a sign that labeled a lot of peaks to the west that I have heard people talk about. I think you could pretty much climb a peak a week in Colorado and not live long enough to get them all. And those are the named ones...
One last off-trail push to a rocky pile of the finest Colorado granite and we were there. We found spots and ate our lunches while passing around the summit register. On the way down we shortcut some of the road by finding fun off-trail descents between the road cuts, and then it was a long, long, frankly boring haul back down to the cars. Jebus it took forever, although not without entertainment. There was this cat named Andrew who was halfway through a doctoral program at School of Mines who was strong as an ox but had no gear of his own, and there was a retired mathematics prof and a near-retirement physicist from NIST who had a great time talking about all things science and math, and it was really fun just listening to them having such a good time getting geeky.
At long last we reached the cars and agreed that the only thing better than sitting down would be sitting down on a barstool with an alcoholic barley-based beverage of some sort in our hands. Our carpool contented ourselves with a stop at the convenience store right before we got on the 70, where Mathematician Phil bought a coke because it was in a glass bottle and it made him nostalgic. I, however, noticed the extra nutrition label pasted on the neck of the bottle and asked if it was a Mexican coke, and of course it was! I told him what I had learned from Sang--that in Mexico they were still made with sugar and not that nasty-ass HFCS and therefore tasted so much better and that's why at Father's Office all the cokes are Mexican.
Soon enough we arrived at the park-n-ride, and that was the end of that. Legendary CMC leader Dave G signed off on my C rating upgrade form with a nice compliment about my general outdoorsy awesomeness, and that was that. I emailed a copy of it to the BMS director as soon as I got home, and I will send it in to the upgrade committee tomorrow. Even if I don't get into BMS, at least if I want to go on an outing that is at least halfway cool I won't have to call or email the leader and beg, proffer climbing resumes, etc. So yay, me!! Hopefully I'll actually get into BMS and will be able to be a fully contributing member of our rope team when James and I do Ptarmigan Ridge this summer.
As for James declaring that we are climbing Kelso Ridge on Memorial Day weekend, I have a counter-proposal of my own: Craig and Jen's San Juan River permit was granted, so how'd you like to do a super cool float trip instead?
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