The night’s sleep couldn’t have been any shorter. It was cold, 20 degrees or so, but I was comfortable in my down sleeping bag. I used Hannah’s tent because mine still had a bit of a smell from the summer’s kayak trip. I do not like the Marmot Aeolos. It is too short, tough to set up, not free standing and catches the wind like a sail. It won a bunch of awards a few years ago and she seems to like it but I am not a fan. I was exhausted from the drive and was really looking forward to at least a few hours of good sleep but it never came. Rainy was fidgeting all night, partly due to the cold and partly due to being in a different tent than Yukon. I have been down and out sick for few days before the trip and wasn’t even sure I was going to make the trip. I was feeling better so I risked traveling and was doing well until I laid down to sleep. My stomach was upset all night and I kept feeling like I was about to cough up a lung. I may have gotten 45 minutes of sound sleep bringing my total since leaving Houghton to about 3 hours.
I was out of the tent about a half an hour before my alarm went off and wandered around in the dark with the dog while everyone else slept. At 5AM everyone rolled out of their sleeping bags and started to gear up. I ate a quick breakfast of Pop-Tarts, which my stomach wasn’t thrilled about and we headed up the trail by headlamp. We decided to follow the standard South Ridge route up to Maroon Peak and it seemed simple at first but it wasn’t long before we realized we missed our trail and had to back-track a ways. This really set the tone for the day. After about three miles we left the dogs with Andy and headed toward tree line. We once again missed the trail and ended up about a half mile off route. Another bit of back-tracking led us to a faint trail through some bushes that no one had been on since the snow had fallen. We set off down the path and left some foot prints in the untracked snow. The route immediately became almost impossible to follow. It wound it’s way across a boulder field scattered with snow. It was tough to navigate by the cairns people had built because they were scarce and hard to see amongst the snow. The trail wandered in and out of the bushes and was barely a trail at all. We had a difficult time staying on course and wasted a lot of time deliberating and route finding. We climbed a short class 3 scramble and made our way up a long talus and boulder slope to tree line.
Image courtesy of 14ers.com
By the time I hit tree line the lack of sleep and sickness were really starting to wear on me. I felt tired and my lungs were burning, not from elevation but from the constant coughing and hacking. We rested a bit and evaluated the situation. The wind was blowing up spin drift on the peak and I was intimidated by the steep ascent ahead of us. My brother took this opportunity to inform me that he had been perusing 14ers.com, THE source for info on Colorado’s peaks, and that no one had ever logged an October climb of the Maroon Bells. Great. It was getting late in the day and prospect of some hard, technical climbing on tired legs and sick lungs was not appealing. We discussed our situation and everyone danced around the idea of just calling it and descending but no one wanted to admit defeat. We eventually came to it after much back and forth and we headed down. I wasn’t going to make the summit, I know it, but I think if we wouldn’t have repeatedly gotten lost my brother and Aaron might have had a shot.
The descent was easy enough and went much faster than going up. We talked about the climb and all of us decided that this was not a climb to be missed and we would all be back at some point. Maroon Bells is spectacularly beautiful. The views, both above and below treeline, are amazing. The climb was fun and the hiking below treeline was great. This is definitely one of the prettiest areas I have been to in Colorado.
Below treeline we found the trail, which was empty in the early light of morning, was crawling with hikers. It was like a small highway and the closer we got to the parking lot the more people we saw. The area around the lake, where you can take a classic Colorado post card image, was packed.
We found Andy taking a nap with the dogs in the Jeep and scared him when we walked up. We loaded up, organized our gear and headed back into Aspen. Did I mention I hate that town? We ate another fast food meal and left as quickly as we could. We headed back through Independence Pass and bid the Dutchman farewell. He had to drive back down to Texas and we were headed over toward Breckenridge for some more climbing.
We headed back through Leadville and stopped in Breck for some dinner at Fatty’s Pizza. One thing I love about going west is that I can get beer that just isn’t available in Michigan. I had a pint of Fat Tire with my pizza. The food was good and the beer was cheap so I would say that this restaurant was a winner.
We headed south to the town of Alma, where they have a general store called the Almart (in the same font and logo as Walmart). The drive up to Kite Lake was nice, gaining 3,000 feet over 6 miles of rough and rocky road. We camped at the end of the road at the Kite Lake campground which sits at about 12,000 feet. It was the highest elevation I have ever camped. It was dark when we arrived and we set up the tents in the wind and settled in for another cold night.
View Maroon Bells to Kite Lake in a larger map
You can My brother’s account of the entire trip on his blog at Inside The Outside and you can read the Dutchman’s point of view on our climb of Maroon Peak at his new blog Live & Play. You can see more photos from our trip at our Picassa Page.
2 Responses
-
Jane Kastner Says:
What type of camera are you using for these shots? They look great, unlike my photos which look too overexposed in snow. Help please…
-
Matt Says:
Thanks for the kind words. I was shooting a Canon 30D with a 28-80mm F3.3 lens. I tend to underexpose when I am shooting water or snow. I shoot RAW files so I can retouch them a bit in Photoshop. I would like to use a polarizer in those conditions but my budget hasn’t allowed it yet.
