1 post tagged “indian peaks wilderness”
Where was I? Oh yeah- so everything started out splendidly. Beautiful views, nice weather, a series of waterfalls (it's not called Cascade Falls for nothing)...
My backpack has never fit me properly, and it was definitely causing me a fair amount of pain, but I could handle it (or so I thought). Matt, fresh from multiple trips in the Sierra and a recent trip to the Andes, was cruising like a freaking antelope, Jen was a little behind him, and I was taking up the rear. While I've gotten acclimated to Denver, I still have problems at 8-9 thousand feet+, especially with 45 lbs on my back.
Just when I was getting really worn down, we came around a corner and saw Lone Eagle Peak staring at us:
Now that's an imposing-looking mountain! From this angle, you're actually looking at the end of a ridge, so it's not nearly as daunting as it appears.
We finally got to camp, about 4 1/2 hours after leaving the trailhead. It felt so damn good to get that blasted pack off my back! Sometimes I can get the thing adjusted ok, but about half the time it just kills me when I use it. I've got to buy one that fits me before my next trip. Here's a view of Lone Eagle from near our camp. This is a popular spot for photographers. Without a wide-angle lens, you can't quite get the full peak and reflection.We crashed after dinner, since the plan was to get up bright and early, bag the peak, take down camp, hike out, and try to get to Red Rocks for the YMSB show.
We got a decent start on Sunday morning. I think we got going by 8. It was peak thunderstorm season, so the idea was to get up and down quickly, to avoid getting fried by a lightning bolt. Right around this time, the camera gave me a "Change battery pack" message. I wanted to make sure to get a summit shot, so I only took a couple shots on the way up. Then we figured out that the message wasn't correct, since the battery was pretty full. Bummer.Here we are heading toward the base of Lone Eagle:
Once we got there, we veered slightly too far right, which resulted in a long journey over a big talus field:
On the way down, we realized there was a trail to the left of the talus, which would have saved us about a half hour on the way up. After scrambling through this maze of boulders (and avoiding many deadly Rocky Mountain Marmots), we came to the bulk of our climb, which would lead us around the base of the mountain, ascending slowly the entire way. The view of Lone Eagle becomes much less daunting when you get close:
We ran into another climbing party about halfway up, which gave us some reassurance that we hadn't strayed off the path. Although, on the way down, we did realize that we had made the ascent longer (and harder) than necessary. This is an extremely popular climb, so there are secondary trails (and cairns) all over the place. At least we knew where our destination was the whole time.
The summit of Lone Eagle is odd, because you climb down to get there. I don't have any pictures of the final approach, because I was thinking more about arriving there safely. There's a traverse over and slightly down a ridge, with an optional quick rappel thrown in. Oh, did I mention the weather? There was rain and loud thunder nearby, but it was being considerate, and seemed to be holding off long enough for us to finish our task.
The summit was pretty freaky- you had to crawl out on a ridge that was a few feet wide, with massive, sheer faces on either side. Here's Matt on the summit (note the nasty-looking clouds approaching):
Matt put the "happy Jon" summit pic on his blog, but here's the "Jon trying to look like a badass, but actually looking quite scared" photo:
And then one final happy photo before descending:
Jen kicked ass on the climb- she made it through stuff that she hasn't done in the past, and conquered some of her fears. The sketchiest part of the climb happened really close to the end- there was a little lateral traverse that was super-exposed, and she looked down at the 500+ foot drop below her feet, and decided that was enough. The nice thing about non-technical stuff is that it's a lot faster, but it's also a lot scarier when you don't have a safety net. While she didn't make it to the true summit, this spot was actually at a higher elevation than the official summit:
We cruised down the way we came, as quickly as possible, and started get rained on right as we were getting off rock, and onto dirt & grass. By the time we got to camp, it was coming down pretty hard, so we had to wait it out in the tents for a couple hours. Lone Eagle Peak had taken us 6 hours round trip.
The weather cleared up quite nicely, so we packed up as quickly as possible, and headed toward the trailhead. It took about 3 1/2 hours, and we knew we had to scrap the Red Rocks idea. We didn't get back to Denver until about 10:30. No worries, though- backpacking and tackling Lone Eagle was infinitely more rewarding than a concert. It definitely got me excited about doing some easy technical climbs- I guess I'll have to get out to the Sierra at some point...
