TR: Pyramid Peak, CO
Brian L. Rachford
Total elevation gain: 4570 ft/1390 m
Round trip distance: 6.0 miles/9.7 km
Northwest Ridge II, Class 4
Sunday, 20 August 1995
Ken Akerman and I met via the 'net and in a response to my
recent Missouri Mountain trip report, he suggested that we
climb a 14er together. Since I would have a climbing partner
(unusual for me), one of the climbs I suggested was Pyramid
Peak. This steep mountain is only a couple miles from the
Maroon Bells and is one of the harder Colorado 14ers to climb.
Ken was amenable, so we made plans for a weekend trip to
the Maroon Valley.
I drove to Ken's place in Fort Collins on Saturday and we made
the drive to the Maroon Bells Campground in his Trooper. We
arrived at the upper parking area at around 7:30pm and cooked
some dinner. The plan was to sleep in the back of the Trooper
and get an early start Sunday morning.
Shortly after arriving, we talked to a pair of climbers that
had ascended Pyramid earlier in the day. They had ascended
the more difficult northwest ridge route which has a few
sections where some people rope up. They had a rope but
didn't use it, but they did say that it was tricky and exposed.
They were very experienced (at least one of the guys had
climbed all the 14ers once and many of them multiple times),
and I was pretty sure that I didn't want to try this route.
The weather was mediocre with the tops of the Bells in and
out of clouds and there were a few early sprinkles. However,
there hadn't been any thunderstorms or heavy rain.
Ken's watch alarm went off at 4am. Despite not getting much
sleep, I felt pretty good and ready to roll. After getting
dressed and having breakfast we hit the trail at 4:48am.
The beginning is quite easy as you lose about 120ft heading
down towards Maroon Lake. Ken had his headlamp so he led
and I followed with my mini-maglite. The pair of climbers
we had talked to before told us that the turnoff from the
main trail was marked by a large cairn with multi-colored
trail-marking tape. Despite knowing this, we almost missed
it in the dark.
This very steep trail leads up into an amphitheater below
Pyramid's very steep north face. The trail was difficult
to follow in places until it got light. Once we got into
the amphitheater we got a little confused as to where we
were supposed to be heading. We tried to follow the trail,
but as we were later to find out, the trail was buried under
the snowfield that ran from 11-12000ft. Complicating the
route-finding was that everything above 13500ft or so was
covered by clouds; if the summit had been visible, it
would have been obvious where we were heading. Anyway,
we finally figured it out and started hiking up the snowfield.
The angle was never more than 20 degrees, but the snow was
a little slick (well-consolidated, though).
At about 12000ft, you make the choice between heading left
up to the standard northeast ridge route, or right to the
northwest ridge. Ken was willing to do either route,
but I didn't want to chance the harder route, so we headed
left.
After traversing across the snow, we reached the base of
the right-hand of two small subgullies leading up to a wider
gully. I led up the first part of this gully, kicking steps up
a short 30-35 degree snow slope. The rest of the gully was on
steep dirt and loose talus, with some places where we could
scramble on a rock rib. Near the ridge crest we hit a trail,
which led to a 13000ft saddle on the northeast ridge.
This is where the real climbing starts. The route up to the
summit is marked by rock cairns with bright blue and pink
blazing tape and stays well below the ridge in places.
Despite the markers, the route-finding is still not trivial
as the markers often aren't easily visible in the jagged
terrain, and you do have to be careful to pick the best
line up to the next marker. To complicate matters, it was
still foggy and we couldn't see the summit. The 1000 vertical
feet to the summit requires a lot of hand work - sometimes on
very loose rock - with a few tricky spots and there is some
exposure. The steepest climbing is on stair-step rock of good
quality except for the debris on the steps. Shortly after
leaving the saddle, there's a spot where you traverse across
a ledge that narrows to about 16 inches at an outward bulge
in the rock with a 20-foot cliff below you. Fortunately,
the handholds were good here. The only other specific section
I remember on the ascent was a short section of stair-step
climbing high up that probably contained a couple of the
"occasional Class 4 moves" (quoting from Roach's guidebook)
that gives the route it's rating. Still, neither of us were
having any problems with the climbing, and we were pretty much
able to prevent loosing any rocks.
I hadn't reset my altimeter at the parking area and neither
had Ken. Thus, we were both surprised to see the terrain
level off and a large cairn appear. Sure enough, this was
the summit, which we reached at 9:48, exactly 5 hours after
starting, and 63 minutes after reaching the ridge. Pretty
good time, especially since we lost a fair amount of time
on route-finding low on the mountain.
The summit is a flat, narrow (~2-3 meters) ridge with good
dropoffs in all directions. Unfortunately, we were still
in the clouds and didn't have much of a view. However, when
the clouds were at their densest and we couldn't see anything
but the immediate summit area, the dropoffs seemed even more
dramatic. In the clearest moments we could see all but the
top 500ft or so of the Maroon Bells. However, despite the
clouds, the weather was still pretty good with no wind and
the temperature was in the upper 40s.
Not surprisingly, the 13-month old summit register didn't show
a particularly large number of ascents, with the first ascent
this year not occurring until mid-July. We pushed the total
of registered ascentists this year to about 30. Interestingly,
there was also a bible up here, encased in plastic and a wire
cage.
We left the summit at 10:35, and carefully picked our way
downward. This was a little easier as we generally could
see the markers better from above, and we could see the saddle
most of the time. After descending a few hundred feet, we
encountered a pair of climbers heading up, including one
who was about 20 minutes from finishing off his last (54th)
Colorado 14er!
The descent back to the saddle took almost exactly as long
as the climb. Just above the saddle there's a place where
you have the choice of a short jump across a gash or climbing
above it. The descent down from the saddle was straight-
forward since we discovered that there's a trail all the way
down. We didn't find it on the way up because it starts
in the other sub-gully that I mentioned earlier. Partway
down the slope we encountered a group of three; we would
see no one else on the route the rest of the way down.
At the bottom of the gully there was a short glissade which
I took first. Unfortunately, I wasn't too careful with
my speed, and managed to (barely) draw blood on the side of
my hand on a rock while self-arresting. Needless to say, Ken
followed more carefully. The gentle snowfield that would
take us back down to the trail was glissadable, but it was
also littered with small rocks so we hiked and slid down it
on our feet.
The rest of the hike down to the main trail was steep and
it's quite overgrown in spots with some significant trail
damage. However, in full daylight we were able to follow
it all the way down. Once we reached the main trail we
stayed on it and hiked right alongside Maroon Lake which was
quite scenic, albiet fairly crowded.
We made it back to the parking area at 2:04pm for an elasped
time of 9:16. The timing was impeccable; it started raining
as we were rearranging stuff in the Trooper for the drive
home.
Although this was a challenging climb that requires care,
neither of us felt it was terribly dangerous. Although there
is a loose-rock problem especially on the last 1000ft, since
the route is more of an ascending traverse than anything else,
there usually won't be another group directly above you.
I think the biggest dangers here are if the weather turns bad
as there is no quick escape off this mountain. If the rock
was wet, the downclimbing would get very tricky. However, if
you are reasonably experienced and are used to exposure, this
is a very interesting climb to do; just make sure you allow
plenty of time.
Brian
____________________________________________________________________
Brian L. Rachford, grad student | rach...@sparky.uwyo.edu
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy | rach...@uwyo.edu
University of Wyoming, Laramie | http://plains.uwyo.edu/~rachford/
Ken Akerman
Ken