Maximum Safe Altitude

Mike's Colorado Visit

Mike and I go way back. We first started climbing together in Kentucky back in the day. Though we haven't lived in the same state since 1996, we did a lot of AT sections together as well as climbing and caving at Seneca Rocks. Our trips were always marked by marathon days of hiking much of it in the dark, pushing out one day early to heed the call of pizza, and other macho insanity. He's always been stronger than I am; able to hike faster and farther under a heavier load. Now that he lives in Michigan and I'm in Colorado, we get together less often so I was looking forward to some good old times during his biannual Colorado trip. He may be stronger, but I'm used to the altitude and conditions here. Let's see how it goes...

Part 1: Snowed out in the Sawatch

The beautiful Pine Creek valley at the Colorado Trail

Little John Cabin at mile 6.5.

We got to bed early with plans to hike up-valley the next day and check out, maybe even climb, some combination of Missouri, Oxford, Belford, Iowa, and Emerald Mountains or at the very least get to Silver King Lake at the end of the valley. A light snow in the morning caused us to downgrade our ambitions to simply hiking up to the lake and back. Since we'd seen almost no snow on the way in and the peaks (from what we could see of them), looked clear below the highest elevations, we didn't bring any of our standard snow gear. This turned out to be a bad mistake! Shortly after leaving camp, we encountered our first snowdrifts in the dense forest. The trail disappeared and we spent a couple hours postholing through the woods and into willow traps left and right. The snow got heavier and heavier throughout the day as well making life generally miserable. Even gaiters, sitting back at camp, would have made life better, but as it was, our boots filled with snow early on and got pretty wet.

The best view we had all day. Also about the least snow.

Finally, we reached the upper end of the valley and crossed the creek. We climbed a surprisingly steep snowfield to a ridge at 12,200' and, as the weather worsened, we climbed to Silver King Lake. There wasn't much to see as the weather was now full-on winter conditions with heavy snow and a strong wind. Mike had been feeling nauseous ever since reaching about 12,500', so we quickly turned around and thrashed back through the valley. As soon as we dropped in elevation, Mike felt better.

We discussed our options on the way back. "We're going to have a hard time doing anything with boots this wet, even if it clears up tomorrow," said Mike. I'd been thinking along similar lines. "Not so sound like a wuss, but maybe we should pack up and head out tonight." Now that he mentioned it, it did sound like an attractive notion, wuss or no.

In fact, the 8 mile retreat under heavy packs wasn't nearly as horrible as we'd feared. Simply being out of the constant demoralizing postholing made the miles fly by. We reached the car at about 7 and retreated to Leadville for dinner and then home. It was with some dismay that we saw clear peaks on the drive out, but this was a temporary respite; Wednesday reportedly brought at least half a foot of new snow to the Sawatch range. We would have been tent-bound for a day or two, wet boots or not.

Part 2: Better weather closer to home

The road to the Fourth of July TH was essentially clear despite three new inches of snow from the previous day. Everything was sparklingly white which, in November would be pretty and exciting, but in May is just demoralizing. We went out a bit more lightly this time without quite as much snow gear, and only one night's worth of food. Still, the packs were heavy with snowshoes, axes, crampons, and so forth.

The south-facing trail was largely clear and what wasn't clear was packed hard by many booted feet. After a mile, we turned onto the Diamond Lake trail and immediately encountered deep snow. Snowshoes helped, but we still sank in periodically and unexpectedly under the weight of our packs. Nor was the trail possible to follow, so we ended up thrashing through the trees navigating by GPS and sheer luck to Diamond Lake. We'd been 2.5 miles, but it was quite a slog.

Mike views the SE face of Jasper from above our camp.

Mike completes his first snow climb onto Jasper's East Ridge.

Up at the lake, everything was snow covered and, of course, I'd left the shovel in the car since we hadn't needed it in our previous campsite! We finally found a small, cleared area above the lake at 11,000' and set up camp there. Still, we couldn't go out to get water, hang the bear bag, or do any of the other camp tasks without snowshoes on. Feh! I'm tired of winter.

In the afternoon, the weather clouded up and it started to snow again. We took an exploratory jaunt up the valley before returning to camp for dinner and an early bed.

The morning was clear, windy, and cold! We geared up and followed our tracks from yesterday afternoon up a much-solidified snow slope to a broad plateau at 11,500'. We aimed for the East Ridge of Jasper. Our options were either climb a nasty-looking talus slope or climb a moderate snow slope. Mike had no experience with axe-and-crampon use, but agreed to give it a shot after a quick lesson in self-arrest. It went extremely well; the snow was still quite firm and we cramponed up the snow at a good clip for 500'.

At 12,000', we wandered along the windy, mostly-cleared ridge toward the summit. As we crossed 12,500', Mike began to feel significantly ill again. We took several long rests but it refused to clear up. The summit was right there mocking us across a good snowfield and a false summit. Couldn't be more than a quarter mile away! Finally, he said "why don't you go bag the summit while I wait here." I'm always hesitant to split up in the mountains, but felt I could easily reach the summit and return in half an hour or so. And it would be nice to salvage something from this week of set-backs.

"I'll go for 20 minutes and turn back," I said. "Expect me back here in 30-40." I set off across the snowy saddle with a will and made good time. The snow slope up to the false summit was surprisingly steep and I took to the rocks when possible rather than the steep, softening snow. With a few minutes left before my turn-around time, I made it to the extremely windy false summit. Gingerly, I picked my way across the rough ground to the true summit a few feet higher (21 minutes after leaving Mike). There was no shelter at all, but the views were spectacular. I snapped a bevy of photos, whooped once, and turned tail.

From Pt. 12587, the remainder of the East Ridge becomes visible. The snow below the false summit is a lot steeper than it looked!

Looking back at our route from the summit.

Going back was far from trivial as I had to down-climb the steep snow slope east of the false summit. I arrived back at Mike's nook after 35 minutes to find him in no better condition despite the extended rest out of the wind. We took off gently down the ridge and, as soon as we dropped below 12,500', he felt completely fine. Apparently 12,500' is Mike's maximum operating altitude.

The descent from the ridge was annoying. The snow slope we'd come up wasn't something I wanted to glissade with an inexperienced partner, so we picked our way down the talus until we found a 100' drop with clear run-out. The snow turned out to be a good deal softer and slower than I'd thought, so we probably could have glissaded the whole thing. Mike also really enjoyed the glissading, and we found a couple more slopes to slide on the way back down.

We got back to camp around noon and spent an hour lounging and packing up for the trip out. We found the trail down once near the lake, but immediately lost it in the dense woods and deep snow. We wandered steeply downward instead and arrived at the river about half a mile downstream from the bridge. After working upstream for a while, we were back on established trail and gratefully doffed the flotation. Then it was a matter of a sunny, hot, slushy mile of slogging back to the car and the luxuries of civilization.

The Wilderness Journal

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