TR: Indian Peaks, Colorado (Lone Eagle/Mohling Traverse)
bwr...@aurum.com
Here's a trip report of a long day I did a couple of weekends ago. No high
level climbing, but fun, technical terrain in a beautiful mountain setting
where we didn't see anyone for hours.
Bill
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Difficulty Unknown
Marathon Day: Lone Eagle and the Mohling Traverse
Gerry Roach is the undisputed Master Peak Bagger for Colorado mountains. He
has published numerous guidebooks including the only climbing guide to the
Indian Peaks. In this guidebook he lists 33 "Classic" routes. Being a rabid
pursuer of classics and an anal list checker, I directed my attention to
these routes. On the front cover of his new edition is a striking photo of
the North Face of Lone Eagle Peak, one of the classics. This route had to be
climbed. A few weeks after I acquired my autographed copy (my wife works with
Gerry) of the guidebook, I got a call from a past climbing partner: Mark
Oveson. He had a vision. A vision that involved the North Face of Lone Eagle
Peak.
The problem with Mark's vision was the ambitious nature of it. He wanted to
hike over to the base of Lone Eagle (a 10 mile hike) and climb the North Face
(10 pitches of lower 5th class climbing with a near vertical 5.7 crux) the
same day. Gerry's guide states that a one-day ascent of the North Face is
"reserved for the ultra-fit." I usually don't fall into that category, but
knew that Mark was almost always in that category. Maybe it would be a fun
challenge. But that wasn't the end of Mark's vision. From the top of Lone
Eagle Peak he wanted to do something called the Mohling Traverse. This
traverse involves climbing the ridge from Lone Eagle (11,940), over "Limbo"
(12,420), over "Iroquois" (12,799), over George (12,876), and finally over
Apache (13,441) and back down to the car. I calculated this out to be about
17 miles of hiking and 7000 total vertical feet of climbing of which about
3000 vertical would be 3rd class or harder. But the most daunting aspect was
that Gerry himself hasn't done it and his guidebook has only a couple
sentences of information. And it is marked "Difficulty Unknown."
Mark reminded me of an old issue of Rock & Ice that described a number of
classic traverses, including the awesome Grand Traverse in the Tetons. I'd
tried to do a small section of the Grand Traverse once and didn't really
complete much of it over 3 days. Clearly the Mohling Traverse wasn't in that
league, but the author (now editor of Rock & Ice), Dougal McDonald, described
his numerous attempts to complete this adventure. He wasn't thwarted by
technical difficulties, just marmots and weather, but he also never
contemplated doing it in one day. Dougal reported that the traverse from the
summit of Lone Eagle to Apache took him 7 hours. I assumed we could match his
time and calculated the rest of the route:
Section Section Total
time (hours:minutes) Time
4.25 miles and 2000 feet of gain to the
top of Pawnee Pass (12,500) 1:30 1:30
4.5 miles and 2500 feet of descending to
the Crater Lake Trail junction (10,000) 1:00 (running) 2:30
1.0 mile and 700 feet of gain to
Crater Lake (10,700) 0:30 3:00
Hike up to the base of the North Face
(~400 vertical feet) and gear up. 0:30 3:30
Climb 10 pitches to the summit of
Lone Eagle Peak 3:00 6:30
Do the Mohling Traverse 7:00 13:30
Descend back to the car 2:00 15:30
Fifteen and a half hours and I didn't allow for any breaks. Sounds grueling,
but possible. I agreed and we set a date: August 22nd.
The weekend before our outing I entered the Pikes Peak Ascent race for the
first time. This race is 13.4 miles, and 7,840 vertical feet of
hiking/running up the Barr Trail to the summit of Pikes Peak (14,110). The
week before this I was in the Tetons for a week and did more than 25,000
vertical feet of hiking and climbing. That, coupled with some trail runs, was
my training. I did better than expected in the Ascent (61st out of 1800) and
it boosted my confidence for the marathon approaching.
I picked Mark up at 3:30 a.m. and we drove north out of Boulder up to
Brainard Lake and the Long Lake Trailhead of the Indian Peaks Wilderness
area. We started hiking at 4:31, already a minute behind my projected
schedule. The hike up to Pawnee Pass wasn't very pleasant as it was of course
completely dark, but it was also overcast and near the pass we encountered
dense fog and 30-40 mph winds. We both doubted that we'd do anything more
than take a long hike. We arrived at the pass in an hour and thirty-four
minutes - already four minutes behind on a super long schedule. A schedule
that involved running just to keep the day at 15.5 hours!
We trotted down the backside for 53 minutes to the Crater Lake Trailhead and
got ahead of schedule. This area is particularly beautiful, as it is lush
with greenery and dense with wildflowers. Unfortunately it had rained all
night long and everything was soaked. This soaked my feet completely. We were
both doing the traverse entirely in our approach shoes. I carried two liters
of Gatorade, some food, extra clothes, 7 long slings, 5 camming units and a
set of stoppers, and one 110' 9mm rope. We were going light.
We hustled up to Crater Lake, hiking now that we were heading up hill, and
around the lake. We passed two tents and saw one person by the second tent.
He informed us that it had indeed rained all night long. This was the only
person we saw until we were hiking out on the Long Lake trail. We went for
over twelve hours with only a couple seconds of human contact. You really can
get the wilderness feeling quite close to Denver.
It was a bit chilly and overcast, but the clouds weren't dark and I was
determined to at least climb the North Face. We crossed the creek and hiked
up very steep grassy slopes and some talus to the base of the route. I
started leading the first pitch three hours and 29 minutes into the day. We
were one minute ahead of schedule. The first pitch is steep and grungy and
loose. I clipped an old pin and cranked the 5.6 move up to easier ground.
Further up I stepped on a large rock and it immediately started tumbling for
Mark. "Rock!" I yelled, fearing the worst. Mark ducked behind a short, three
foot outcrop as the rock shattered above him into many smaller pieces. I
smelled the cordite in the air and was concerned that the rope was damaged.
Mark was protected behind his rock wall, but we decided to belay soon and
check the rope. It was at this point that I realized I had already lost my
belay device. Damn! Mark looked around near where we had geared up, but it
must have fell down into the talus. Very careless of me. I belayed Mark with
a Munter Hitch and he soon joined me at the belay. The rope looked fine and
we continued.
I led out again, as we wanted to simul-climb as much as possible and felt that
I could probably do the route finding faster. We worked up a mostly easy ramp
system with the occasional 5th class move. It was tenuous though because not
only was the whole face wet, but it was covered soaked moss (completely
treacherous) and slimy lichen (dicey). Climbing along this ramp I found, much
to my delight, an ATC belay device with a broken cable. How convenient. I
scooped it up and moved on.
At the top of the ramp I headed straight up for a rope length to the base of
an intimidating and extremely wet chimney. I belayed Mark up to this point
and we re-racked. The route description says to climb this chimney, but it
looked tough with all the water flowing in it. A steep dihedral to the right
looked mostly dry and nicer. It turned out to be fun 5.6 climbing. Above the
dihedral we followed a big gully system up and right that was at times 3rd
and 5th class. At the top of the gully is a steep wall and I ran out of gear
and belayed here. When Mark joined me he asked to lead the next pitch and I
turned over the sharp end. This pitch is grungy, circuitous, and tricky. With
the wet state of the rock, this felt more like 5.8 to me and Mark did a great
job leading it.
We were now on the ledge system that leads to the upper crux pitches. I led
up a long 4th class pitch to the base of the headwall itself. Things look
very steep and intimidating from here. To go straight up is a mandatory 30
foot runout on near vertical rock. There is a pin at this belay and Gerry
says to go to the highpoint on the 4th class section, but I think this is
incorrect. There is supposed to be two parallel cracks and there are not.
Almost straight above us we can see a nice crack system, but it is accessed
from further right. I did a runout traverse from here straight rightwards
across a vertical wall. This climbing is exposed, a bit tricky, and runout. I
clipped another pin near two parallel cracks and then headed up. Here I found
stellar climbing. Beautiful rock, fun moves, good protection, and nearly
vertical. When I got to two pins hanging mostly out of the crack, I ran out
of rope. This pitch is 150 feet long and our 110-foot rope clearly wasn't
going to make it. We thought the climbing was tough enough to warrant a belay
and I equalized a stopper with the two flexing pins and brought Mark up. Mark
led through the crux of the entire day on the next short pitch: a tricky
section, which I did via a fist jam.
We were now almost home free. We were on another bench and I led us around to
the left (east) and then up a 5.6 wall to the summit! The route had taken us
four hours to climb and we were now an hour behind schedule. Yet we still took
15 minutes to drink, eat, and photograph. The summit of Lone Eagle peak is a
ridge about five feet wide. What's more, the "summit" isn't the high point on
the ridge. I know this sounds bizarre, but according to Roach this is the
summit. What's more, the cairn is located on the furthest point north. This is
certainly the most exposed spot, but not the highest.
We checked the sky and could see patches of blue - nothing that warranted
sunglasses by any means, but enough encouragement for us to continue with the
traverse. We left the summit at noon and traversed south and down steep 3rd
class climbing, then further south, and then up a very steep 4th class
section. We were heading for the prominent notch which the Solo Flight route,
the easiest route to the summit of Lone Eagle, uses to ascend. Once through
there we descended a few hundred feet to the col and started up a very
prominent gendarme, which is higher and bigger than Lone Eagle, called
"Limbo." We followed a prominent ramp from the col around towards the west
until the ramp ended. From here, after an aborted attempted to solo up a very
loose, vertical wall, we went out onto the west side where steep climbing led
around to a ramp. The climbing on this section is solid, but a fall would be
death. The ramp now would have been enjoyable 4th class scrambling if it
wasn’t for the wet moss and lichen. This section proved to be the most
dangerous part of the climb. We soloed it because of our need for speed, but
it was stressful. Above the rock was drier and cleaner and very nice 3rd and
4th class scrambling led up the north face to the summit of "Limbo." It had
taken us an hour and ten minutes to go from Lone Eagle to Limbo. I had
allocated 1.5 hours to reach each of the summits on the traverse with an hour
to spend on any that were more difficult.
We descended south again from the summit and eventually got to the end of the
ridge where it dropped 50 feet completely vertical. The options around this
seemed to be long and we elected to leave a sling and rappel it. After some
searching I found a barely adequate horn to sling and slide down. Mark
decided that it was too dangerous to go down the way I did and went off to
the side more. This created a significant problem in pulling the rope down,
but after 15 minutes we had retrieved the rope.
Roach says that the crux of the traverse will most likely be the north face
of Iroquois and this is probably the case under normal conditions. For us, it
was the north face of Limbo because of the wet rock and vegetation. Iroquois
proved to be mostly fun scrambling as we purposely stayed left of the
prominent, extremely loose gully that cuts the north face. This put us on
better, but steeper rock and we soloed a couple of low 5th class pitches. We
made the traverse from Limbo to Iroquois in an hour and 17 minutes and were
back ahead of schedule.
Here we had to make a long, mostly 3rd class traverse to a steep 4th class
down- climb. Once down we climbed steep, grassy slopes up to clean slabs and
ascended these to the summit of Mt. George. Getting to Mt. George only took
51 minutes from Iroquois, but now the weather had turned on us. Lightning was
striking nearby and the rain had started. We raced to the summit, tagged it
quickly with one hand, and descended 4th class rocks towards Apache. We
weaved around gendarmes until reaching the col at the top of the Fair
Glacier. The glacier was ice hard, but the top was flat. I picked up a rock
to use as a self arrest tool, but it was probably useless considering how
hard the snow was. At the far side of the col we could either descend the
glacier slightly, which I deemed suicidal without crampons, or climb up a
rock wall and down the other side. By doing the latter I was able to avoid
all of the ice. We now had to climb a loose, talus filled gully up to a
notch, then down the other side and up another long slope to the solid blocks
that make up the summit of Apache. With the rain urging us on, we set a good
pace and made the traverse in only 38 minutes. The weather cleared and it was
sunny on the summit of Apache. The Mohling Traverse was officially done. The
total elapsed time from the car was 11 hours and 16 minutes, but the traverse
itself had taken us just under four hours. This was almost identically the
same time it took to climb the North Face of Lone Eagle Peak.
We spent another 15 minutes on the summit of Apache before starting the
descent. The only other time I had been to the summit of Apache, we glissaded
the Queen's Way Couloir, but it was much too hard for us to safely do this. We
checked the book and knew we wanted to descend the East Ledges. Unfortunately,
we didn't find them. We descended much too far north and came down a
dangerously loose gully with a short 5th class chimney that had to be
downclimbed. More loose talus got us down to the boulder field and we
laboriously picked our way over to the trail.
Once on the trail things went smoothly, but fatigue was getting to us. At 13
hours and 50 minutes into the day we thought we were close to the parking lot
and decided to run to see if we could get under 14 hours car to car. I trotted
for eight minutes and then ran harder for two minutes before giving up and
walking. We reached the parking lot at 14:01:38. Totally exhausted. What a
great day! What a great place to live!
Summary:
Total Statistics: ~17 miles of hiking/climbing; 6940 total feet of climbing; 4
summits; 14 hours and 2 minutes
Section Section Total
time (hours:minutes) Time
4.25 miles and 2000 feet of gain to the
top of Pawnee Pass (12,500) 1:34 1:34
4.5 miles and 2500 feet of descending to
the Crater Lake Trail junction (10,000) 0:53 2:27
1.0 mile and 700 feet of gain to
Crater Lake (10,700) 0:28 2:55
Hike up to the base of the North Face
(~400 vertical feet) and gear up. 0:34 3:29
Climb 10 pitches to the summit of Lone Eagle Peak 3:50 7:19
Summit of "Limbo"(includes 15 minute break) 1:10 8:30
Summit of Iroquois 1:17 9:47
Summit of Mt. George 0:51 10:38
Summit of Apache (total time
for Mohling Traverse: 3:57) 0:38 11:16
Descend back to the car(includes 20 minute break) 2:46 14:02
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Mongo
Great Trip report!! It sounds like you had a hell of a good time!
What a nice playground you have!
Mongo