Little Bear Peak and Blanca Peak are Colorado 14ers typically climbed from the Lake Como approach.
Dasani and I backpacked in yesterday to Lake Como for an alpine start to hit all three 14ers in this group including Ellingwood Point, but Mother Nature had other ideas.
An alpine start means going up the horrendously loose gully to the Little Bear ridge in the dark, but going up is always easier than going down when you have limited visibility.
Little Bear Peak is known on the alpine circles for the deadly Hourglass, an hourglass-shaped gully of rock that you must climb where random rockfall can happen at any time.
It’s one thing to die if you make a mistake, it’s another when it’s something completely random and unavoidable.
After a climber was critially injured on July 27th, an alternate route that has been discussed on 14ers.com for years was finally posted as the official route.
While slightly more technical than the Hourglass route, the West Ridge Indirect route is exponentially safer.
We followed the GPX file and instructions for the new route, and as we kept climbing and climbing I kept asking myself when we were going to get to the hard stuff.
Apparently we skirted around the highly-debated crux of the route and didn’t realize it, and suddenly we were at the top of the Hourglass and headed to the summit.
No complaints here!
From the summit of Little Bear Peak there is a ridgeline traverse that is the most direct route over to Blanca Peak, however the commitment level is high – once you’re out there you’re stuck if weather comes in.
With weather coming in all around us, we descended back down to the basin and headed up the standard route to Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point.
Since Blanca is higher and the route is easier we opted to hit it in case the weather moved quicker than anticipated.
And come in quickly it did – hundreds of vertical feet below the summit the rain began, making the remainder of the route slick but manageable.
Shortest summit time ever – a few photos and we quickly headed down as fast as safely possible to get below the rain.
The rain continued all the way back to camp at Lake Como, but after a while it finally started to clear and gave us a chance to hang all of our wet gear to dry.
As long as the morning weather looks good, another alpine start to check Ellingwood Point off the list.
Up The Gully
The gully up from Lake Como to Little Bear Peak is a horrible way to start the morning!
Keep On Climbing
Dasani follows me up the ridge with Lake Como and the Blue Lakes far below us.
Little Bear Peak
Super stoked to be standing on Little Bear Peak!
Rough Country
It’s not easy moving around up here
Stretch It Out
Some long reach moves are required on the route we took
Where is all this water coming from?
Weather Coming Fast
Looking up over Crater Lake at Blanca Peak with storm clouds moving in fast.
Rain on Blanca Peak
We summited Blanca Peak but didn’t stick around long with the rain pouring down.
Starting To Look Bad
The Blanca Group disappears under a wave of heavy rain. Colette took these two shots from the RV down in Alamosa.
Moving Down
What mountains?
