Socked In. Pikes Peak from Garden of the Gods, Colorado, 2015
Attempt? Attempt? Howie, it can’t be! After all, there is a road and a railroad to the top of the dern thing. What do you mean attempt?
Well, the plan was sunrise photography at the summit and a very early morning climb via the Northwest Slopes, or Crags Route. But it was not to be…the narrow weather window I was shooting for, and the route finding, didn’t work out.
The trench through the frozen Styrofoam snow was packed solid by previous feet–perfect for microspikes–all the way up through treeline. Above that, though, the windswept slopes did not hold enough snow to leave tracks for me to follow and I was still not using my new GPS (I will from now on!).
At 4:20a.m., I ended up on a ridge (turns out, pretty close to the route) at about 12,500′, but just bit north of Devils Playground), in the dark, and surrounded by wind-blown, swirling clouds that were increasingly obscuring the lights of Colorado Springs far below.
With me not feeling comfortable about being alone, and a bit disoriented, and with the prospect of sunrise photography looking somewhat bleak, I tracked my own intermittent tracks back down through the tundra and picked up the packed snowshoe trail to the trailhead. (I could have stood there on the ridge, dancing on my feet behind a rock for an hour, awaiting first light for visual clues, but that didn’t seem too appealing at the time.)
Some basic lessons…
–Even an “easy” 14er can become quite difficult if you insist on doing it in the dark and with even slightly unstable winter weather.
–I know of several survival stories in which hikers have mistakenly dropped down the wrong drainage when visibility was limited, only to find themselves bushwhacking (and panicking) through zillions of downed trees and hip-deep snow–it could happen quite easily in the dark, in the clouds, or in a whiteout. Throw in a bit of hypothermia, and you have the makings of a disaster.
–A GPS loaded with detailed maps of the area (or even with just the tracking feature enabled) can be a powerful antidote to disorientation–assuming you carry it with you and know how to use it.
–A 14er will always be there.
–A 14er shouldn’t ever be taken casually.
–If things aren’t going right, there is no reason not to just shrug and say, “Oh, well. Maybe next time.” As we used to say in my aviation days, “It’s always better to be safely on the ground wishing you were ‘up there’ rather than ‘up there’ wishing you were safely on the ground.”
POSTSCRIPT: After the trip, and some analysis, it turns out I could have just kept the wind at my right-rear quarter and walked semi-blindly through the dark and clouds and across the flats until I hit the Pikes Peak Road. At that hour, no one would have been patrolling it (it is prohibited to walk it; you have to use the near-parallel footpath) and I could have easily walked it to the summit. In addition, a look at the summit cam later that day showed the summit above the clouds–so perhaps that sunrise photography would have been ultra-spectacular after all. But, you know what they say…hindsight is 20-20.
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