Mt. Yale - May 14th, 2004
High altitude travelers in Colorado have come to know May as the month of postholing. Postholing is when you sink in deep snow and your footprints resemble holes dug in the ground for fence posts. It is very difficult to travel across snow in this condition. However, spring snow in Colorado is frozen solid in the early morning hours and travel is quite easy. However, once the sun has warmed the snow by the afternoon, you will sink even with snowshoes!
Angi does not like to drive in the early morning, and we wanted to be sure to avoid the softer snow of the afternoon, so we decided to head up Cottonwood pass late Friday after work. We left Boulder by 4pm, and arrived at the trailhead just after 7pm. We quickly headed up the trail to make use of our hour of remaining sunlight.
Snowline began at 11,000', shortly after our turnoff from Denny Creek to Mt. Yale Trail. The light faded as the snow deepened, and we soon found ourselves on a few feet of snow, traveling in the dark. We were traveling light, and I had taken the gamble of not bringing snowshoes. We were now risking postholing, so when we came across a clearing, we setup camp.
Another gamble I had taken to keep the weight low was to not bring a stove. We brought a water pump and food which did not need cooking. I was hoping the steam would not be running below the surface of the snow so I could pump more water for us to drink. Fortunately, all of my hopes came true. Even with a few feet of snow still on the ground, it was firm enough for travel during night/morning, and the stream was accessible.
After a short night (10pm to 3am), we awoke, ate some pop tarts, and headed up the trail, still in the darkness of night. Unfortunately, about 100 yards past where we had camped, the trail split off in about ten different directions. We picked one and headed up. We soon lost the tracks we were following, as the snowcover on the southwest facing slope was patchy.
Angi was having a bit of a rough morning. She did not sleep very well, and was sort of in a funk. We stopped for a bit, and she noticed something was strange with her trekking pole. Had she put it down on something? No... Something had eaten it overnight. The grips on the pole were completely torn to shreds. She hadn't noticed during the previous hour since it was dark, and she was wearing winter gloves. Now her morning went from bad to worse, and we sat down for a bit to talk it over.
Not long after we sat down, we heard a sound that sounded something like a tree falling nearby, crashing through the forest. I immediately stood up, and looked in the direction of the sound. As my headlamp batteries were somewhat low, I could not use the powerful Xenon bulb in my head lamp, and my LEDs only projected twenty feet or so, and certainly did not shed any light on what could have made the noise. Angi and I stared into the darkness for a bit, looked and each other and shrugged. Then, we heard it again. This was definitely not just a dead tree which happened to fall as we were nearby.
I am temped to think it was a bear, but as our descent route did not take us past this point to look for tracks in the snow, it is difficult to say. I can tell ou it was a large mammal. I could not rule out Elk, although I would not expect to see one at 12,000' on a steep hillside. Regardless, we yelled a bit at it, and quickly headed off in the opposite direction.
The incident had the added benefit of getting Angi somewhat out of her funk, and we continued up the slope, and soon crested the ridge, and left treeline behind us. We could now seen the route to the summit, and since it was very snowy, we paused to put on our crampons. It was about six in the morning, and the views were incredible. The sky was becoming brighter, and we could see the sun would soon begin to cast it's pink glow on the high peaks nearby.
I checked my thermometer, which gave me the same reading we'd seen all morning, twenty degrees F. It was cold, and the steady breeze blowing only served to make our ascent colder. Soon we found ourselves ascending a broad snowfilled gully at about 13,000'. The gully was somewhat steep, about 35 degrees. I had my ice axe out, but Angi chose to keep ascending with her trekking poles, as the slope was not too great.
As we neared the saddle the headwind we had been experiencing began to increase dramatically. I had been breaking trail all day, and was getting a bit tired. Angi began to get really cold, and nearly jogged up to the saddle to find a sheltered spot to warm up. It was difficult to find shelter on the steep ridge, and I met her and we discussed our plan.
The altimeter read 13,800'. We were very close to the summit, but Angi was having trouble staying warm. I told her we could put on some more warm clothes, drop the rest of our gear, and tag the summit as quickly as possible. Soon, she agreed, and we quickly cramponed up the ridgeline. This was my first experience with crampons on mixed terrain, and I found the footing strange at first, but more secure than I had expected.
The wind was now steady, around 30 mph. My thermometer's wind chill chart puts that at about 0 degrees F. We made very quick time up the last section of the climb, practically running to get away from the cold. Angi was feeling very bad when we reached the summit. We each posed for a quick picture, hugged, and she headed down without even spending a single minute on the summit. From the exertion of our fast ascent combined with the altitude, she was becoming quite nauseous, and told me later that if she thought she could have barfed, she would have.
I stayed behind on the summit to snap a few pictures of her descending the summit ridge. I headed off behind her, and had a bit of a panic when she dropped to the far side of the ridge, as she was out of sight. I knew she was feeling bad, and I was running scenarios in my head where I turn the corner and she is nowhere to be found, except skidmarks in the snow, dropping off the side of the mountain. But, I soon caught up, and she was safely resting in the snow.
We descended the last bit to the saddle, and started to look for a good, sheltered spot to grab a bite to eat. We headed to the north side of the ridge, and found a decent spot overlooking a small cliff, with rock at our backs. Angi stepped on a snow bridge covering a hold between two boulders, and almost knocked me over the ten foot cliff as she floundered. We collected ourselves, and our gear and ate some much needed food.
We had a great descent, aided by over 2000' of glissaiding. The steeper portions of the gully were exciting, while the lower portions were not quite steep enough. Lower down below tree line, we 'backcountry glissaided' (a term I came up with), finding lines the fall line followed between the trees, and glissaiding, dodging trees, rocks, and bushes as we went. Fun Stuff!
The ascent took 4.5 hours, but we returned to the tent from the saddle in only an hour and 20 minutes. We packed up camp and headed out. It was 11am. We crossed an interesting place where a creek had dug into the ice a few feet. It was something like crossing a crevasse, I suppose...
Often on our trips, we come across another party which reminds us of how 'badass' we are. When we reached snowline at about noon, we came across another couple headed for the summit. They had small daypacks and minimal clothing. They asked about conditions, and said they had brought snowboard boots along. One asked how long it would take, as she thought it would be "a couple hours", I told them to expect 5 hours, and they looked a bit surprised. We said "good luck", and headed off to the car, which, despite reports of trouble at this trailhead, had not been broken into.