Back in June, me and a buddy decided to ski Maroon Peak via bell cord couloir. Unfortunately, many parts of the trip went wrong, resulting in a long and slightly terrifying day.

Coming off a 3 week backpacking trip in Peru and skiing Snowmass mountain the previous weekend, I had high hopes for this trip. After a record low snow year, I was a bit pessimistic about the conditions on Maroon peak, but a somewhat recent trip report gave us a bit more confidence.

We started the trip by driving to aspen from Boulder, taking the shuttle, backpacking in, and camping just past crater lake. It was a nice calm evening, and we went to bed early, excited for a long day tomorrow.

We woke up at 2 am, and promptly packed our bags, fully equipped with crampons, ice axes/tools, and skis.

We began ascending the northeast face, heading up through the garbage shoot, and traversing over to the right side of the face, into Bellcord couloir. As we began booting up the couloir, we quickly realized that skiing would not be very enjoyable due to the many, many rocks covering the snow in the couloir. As dawn broke, we hastily made our way to the top of the couloir, deciding we would climb to the summit, traverse east, and try to ski a different line.

Around 7 am, we left the top of the couloir and began climbing east along the ridge, making steady but slow progress through snow that wasn’t nearly as frozen as we’d hoped, and the infamously bad rock quality of the Maroon Bells.

Around 830 am, we summited, taking in the views and snacking for a bit, but acutely aware of potential warming issues in the snowpack. This will come up soon.

We started to descend to the east, hoping to follow the standard route up Maroon as much as we could until we could find a place to drop in and ski. Unfortunately, with a bit of snow left, this proved to be very difficult, and we often found ourselves down climbing 5th class terrain. I’m a decent climber, but after 5 or so pitches of off-route downclimbing in horrible rock wearing full ski mo gear, I’d had enough.

Around 1030 am, we reached an entrance point for the east face. See the picture above of our route from maroon lake to get a better grasp of our route.

We finally put our skis on, dropped in, and had quite a few good turns on beautiful corn. We began navigating our way down and around cliffs, eventually having to take our skis off and down climb through a rocky section. During this, the snow started turning isothermal, and sliding a bit. We continued to ski down, praying that the exit to the face, a couloir on the skiers left of the face, was filled in enough to ski. Spoiler, it was not.

This exit had become a nice waterfalls, the cherry on top to an already exhausting day. We switched to trail runners, and climbed across and down this waterfall/chute area. The down climbing in this section was probably around 5.5-5.6. This wet rock (did I mention how bad the rock is?) carrying skis 2//not fun.

Eventually, we made it through, and skied down the remainder of the face, linking back up to the garbage chute and exiting the way we came.

Made it back to camp around 2 pm or so, packed up our camp, and backpacked out. Although the day hadn’t gone exactly as planned, it was kinda fun seeing the tourists reactions to two 20 year olds say “we just skied that”.

We took the shuttle back to my car, and drove back to Boulder.

TLDR 2 college kids ski a weird route on South Maroon and pay the consequences

Has anyone climbed middle Teton summit,if so how hard is it right now?

Plenty of snow in the San Juans. I talked some folks out of attempting after I summited who were in jeans with no gear!

Any other 12sters as rad as Engi?

Any suggestions for a similar 14er to do next in CO? Trying to do more and so far got this and Mt.Bierstadt done.

Found a white mag safe wallet on the summit of Gray’s Peak yesterday morning. Drivers license, debit card and student ID inside. F20 from MN don’t want doxx more than that.

Left the parking lot via the Fall Creek trail just before 5am last Sunday. I had previously taken a crack at the route in September of last year while backpacking; I camped too high and got altitude sick before heading down at sunrise. I decided a wanted to try Halo Ridge again and boy was that a good decision. The route itself is relatively unclear past notch mountain with a lot more gain and loss along that ridge than I had expected, but it makes up for it with stunning views in every direction. It is 100% worth doing, once. We descended via the standard route which was 100% the right choice despite the climb out over half moon pass. It kind of blew my mind that people who do out and back via the standard route never get to the the cross couloir. Despite it not being fully in, we still got a lovely view of the peak from notch mountain. 100% recommend halo ridge, though, if i did it again, I'd probably ascend the standard route and return via the ridge.

Overall, an incredibly memorable day, with fantastic friends, lovely October weather, and gorgeous views. Couldn't have asked for better circumstances to finish off the Sawatch range.

Edit: meant 10/11 not 8/11

6-8" of snow on average for the entire route with drifts up to 3'. We postholed almost the entire time except for a few short sections here and there. We went counter clockwise and skipped Democrat because it was slow going. The ridge to Lincoln was a bit interesting! There were 3 other parties today: one did the entire thing, one skipped Lincoln, and the other skipped Lincoln and Democrat. 6.8mi and 7hrs 20mins C2C

Has anyone been up there yet since the snow on Wednesday? I've been waiting to do these two in (somewhat) off season so it's not as crowded and was thinking of doing it tomorrow. I'm guessing someone will have been up there at least today to pack things in.

I’m sure this question gets asked a lot so apologies in advance, but I drove into Denver from Arkansas on Wednesday. Was thinking about doing Bierstadt for my first 14er this Saturday, should I be okay with acclimation? Went to RMNP Thursday and did some hiking up to around 10k a few times, and using today as a rest day before Saturday. Any thoughts are greatly appreciated!

It doesn't look like the Northeast route from Halfmoon Road got hit too hard with the snow yesterday; Snow depth on OpenSnow and AllTrails seem to agree on about 2-5" throughout. I realize that may be deceptive above tree line with wind drifts. I'm no stranger to 14ers or to hiking in snow, but the highest peaks I've done in spikes or snowshoes have been in the 12-13k range.

I had this peak planned for two years and finally completed it end of August. Im not really a peak bagger per se. I choose hikes and summits based on personal goals and overall vibe, etc. My favorite band is Lord Huron (judge me) so this was a no brainer. It did not disappoint.

I summited the day after flying from sea level which is something I havent done before. Im in good shape for hiking and all, and Im not sure if it was due to the quick summit from sea level, but man the recovery was pretty weird. Just exhausted for days.

Anyway, here's a few pics. On to planning the next one.

Hey everyone; long-time listener, first-time caller. I really have appreciated this sub over the last several months as I prepared for my first 14er journey. We (me, my brother and BIL) were shooting for the Uncompahgre/Wetterhorn dual summit "loop" on October 9th. It ended up being a fantastic day but the thing I'm most proud of had nothing to do with the hike itself...

We left our Airbnb in Lake City at 3am with the goal of starting the hike by 4am. I had brought my 4-wheel drive truck because we had read that in order to get to the trailhead we needed a 4-wheel drive vehicle...so I at least had some idea that the road would be tough. I was not prepared for what we encountered and we only made it about a 1/4 of mile up the trailhead road before I realized I couldn't go any further (had already risked severely damaging the truck to even get to that point). As I got out of the truck, my legs were shaking and I felt like I was on the verge of a panic attack, because I realized that I was going to somehow get off that mountain, AFTER hiking for 12 hours and likely in a state of physical/mental exhaustion. I had to focus to put it out of my mind, to convince myself that we could/would deal with it later, and to not have it hang over my head while we were out enjoying the stunning beauty of central Colorado. Managing to pull my shit together, mentally, in that moment, is the thing I'm most proud of.

The hike ended up being awesome - we did Uncompahgre first and it took us about 4.5 hours to get up to the top (~7.5 miles from the TH). By the time we got back to the point at while the trail diverges to the Wetterhorn peak, we'd been going for 8-9 hours and been above 12,000ft for almost that entire time and fatigue was setting in (at least for my anyway). We started up towards Wetterhorn but I don't think we had any serious plans to attempt a summit. Mid-way up it started lightly snowing and I think that sealed the deal that it wasn't the day for a double-summit. The weather most of the day was ideal - temps in the 40s in the valley and in the upper-20s/low-30s up top. Light breeze and sunny. We got really lucky because I think the next day, the remnants of that pacific hurricane rolled in and probably hit that area.

The good news is that we did get off that mountain. Once we got back to the truck, I was able to get turned around and my brother and brother-in-law spotted me through every maneuver. The truck has a few scratches from tree branches, but it no worse for the wear. All-in-all, a great first experience; physically I felt pretty good - my training had mostly prepared for everything except long downhill stretches. My ankles and knees were complaining pretty good, I should have done more lower-leg strength training and will do so for future trips.

Super grateful for this sub and all the wisdom that is shared here in terms of what to pack, what to expect and all of that!

Hey all, gonna be going to quandary peak sometime within the week, anyone who’s hiked it recently know if there’s snow or not?

The lower trail is stunning right now with the peak fall colors. The upper mountain is officially in early winter conditions.
Challenger’s gully is loose with soft snow, and the Avenue is filled in with snow. Traction gear highly recommended to navigate the ledges safely.
A beautiful but grueling day in the Sangres!

Feeling accomplished for bagging my 10th 14er with La Plata!!!
Route wasn’t terrible, minimal snow patches (brought crampons just in case), light wind after timberline. Honestly didnt follow alltrails after the saddle, just kept following cairns and footpaths but was more direct instead of switchback-y. Overall 10/10 would do again

Does anyone have recent (last 12 months) experience they can share about using T-Satellite for communications in the mountains of Colorado?

I am considering getting it for my son as a way to check in periodically while doing 14ers in Colorado.

I understand it is not as robust as a dedicated device like an InReach but I have read good reviews (like OutdoorGearLab) and it sounds a lot more reliable than something like the standard iPhone SOS via satellite. We already use T-Mobile so this would be an easy addition. I am also thinking it could be a decent progression toward a more robust device, if he finds T-Sat useful (but lacking).

Thanks in advance for any insights and apologies if I missed a recent discussion about this in my search.

Hiking Grays and maybe Torrey Sunday. I have a low clearance car and would rather add the miles from lower lot than risk it. I also want to sleep that morning and will probably start walking the road around 7.

What are the odds of seeing cars that might take pity on me walking up around that time?