The Mighty Gores

 Gore Range, Pitkin Lake Drainage - 29 September 2013

I'd been here once, almost 5 years ago, and don't remember much about it beyond being starkly beautiful. But that was before I gained a rudimentary appreciation of what makes a mountain range beautiful or stark, or for that matter, ugly and indistinct.

But I never lost the desire  to go back to the Gores. This weekend I spent a couple of days trying to come to terms with the landscape of the Gores and how I would define it, armed as I was, with a vast new array of mountain climbing adjectives. In the final analysis, words, and to almost the same degree, photos, really don't do much to describe the splendor of that range.

But I brought a camera along and have this blog, so let's have a go.

 

 

 



West Partner - the monarch of the Pitkin Lake trail.



Scenery along the trail.



Pitkin Lake and West Partner





Looking down the valley

Above Pitkin Lake

 
 
 
 
 
 











One of several approaches to the East Partner Traverse

Morning at the bivy site

The East Partner Ridge Traverse

The valley on the way back to the trail head

More of the valley



Until Next time, Glacier Basin

Pagoda Peak and the Keyboards, Rocky Mountain National Park - 9 September 2013

I didn't realize September 9 would be my last visit to the east side of the park for what will probably be a long time. It was easy to underappreciate the Big Thompson Canyon until now.

The best thing about visiting Pagoda Peak via its standard route, and as a bonus, a couple of the easier spires that are the Keyboard of the Winds, is they afford great views of Glacier Basin. Spearhead, McHenry's Peak, Arrowhead and the south-southwest side of Long's Peak.

McHenrys and Arrowhead in the morning

The worst thing about the trip is the talus pile that has to be climbed and then descended on the way to the Pagoda-Keyboard saddle. It's a tedious climb, and can be treacherous on the way down, but it's worth at least one visit, for such an amazing panorama of Glacier Basin and one of the more the obscure perspectives of Long's Peak.

That and the fact that the first Keyboard spire has a first rate drop off and a nice view of the Africa Flake. 

The Second Keyboard's Africa Flake. No cams, please.

Spearhead and Friends

Long's south side including the routes from the Loft



Alice, behinds the flanks of Chief's Head.

Wild Basin

McHenry's Notch

McHenry's Notch and Mt. Powell, Rocky Mountain National Park - June 2, 2013


I thought about doing this route for a year, at least. It had so much to offer: A tour into a deep hanging valley that few people ever see. A northern aspect snow climb, tucked away in shadows by fins of rock. A route finding exercise from an aspect of a park I’d never seen.

Oh, and the 2am alarm. What’s not to like?

KM and I were on the road at 2:30am and hiking by 4:30am. The well worn path through Glacier Gorge, the east-facing route to Shelf and Isolation Lakes. At the first of June, there was still a lot of hardened snow and ice on the “trail” to Shelf and Isolation and the way through was often a choice between treacherous side hilling and scrambling on wet rocks, occasionally peppered by ice-hard snow.

By 9am we toured the hidden valley with Shelf and Isolation at its eastern end. It's a cleft between the steep ravines of Arrowhead, which mellow as we moved west, and the gently sloping southern side of Thatchtop, abruptly ending at the sheer vertical walls along the Thatchtop - Powell ridge.

 

Looking north toward the steep walls below the Thatchtop Powell Ridge

The headwall at the end of the valley. McHenry's Notch is hidden here, next to one of the ridge like structures just left of the headwall in the center of the photo

By 10am we had post-holed through a bowl near the western terminus of this valley, and abruptly, at climber’s left, we spotted an obvious path to the skyline, almost hidden by the sheer walls of Arrowhead and Powell Peak.

Navigationally, it’s not hard to find McHenry’s Notch Couloir. Just climb to the hanging valley’s end until you’re faced with vertical walls and this one hidden ribbon of icy snow, trending southwest.

The climb was moderately steep and the snow soft enough that we slipped past a modest cornice on the steepest exit without difficulty. It ran through my mind that the snow pack here, on this shaded, northern slope, might still be in winter condition. But I tried not to dwell on that. Denial ain't a river in Egypt, as they say.  

The notch itself was a little pocket of nowhere else in Rocky Mountain National Park. McHenry’s Peak towers on one side of the notch with a blocky ridge heading towards the summit. WNW, a spur ridge of Powell Peak, with vertical stone walls, like mustard-colored organ pipes, bookends the other side of the notch.

We’ve both travelled pretty extensively in RMNP in the last few years but at the notch, we were given something special. Describing the experience with words and photos seems like a dreary replacement for being there.

It’s not so much about climbing McHenry’s Notch. It’s about being there. A panaroma of valleys, ramparts, sequestered lakes, and sheer cliffs, clattering and hissing with falling ice and snow.  An experience won with the usual currency of muscles and lungs. 

 

 

 The “obvious exit gulley” to Powell Peak was nothing but in these spring like conditions.

 

 

 

The shoulders of Powell on the western side are steep and offer all kinds of sucker-exits, a few of which we were conned into, and downclimbing them with packs, boots and crampons was spicy.

Eventually we arrived on the top of Powell Peak, via a gully less menacing than most others, guarded by a cornice. 

 

I stood there and remember trying hard to encapsulate our trip before we’d have to leave, and embrace the trudging tundra-walk home. 

Was it executing on a plan fermenting so long, or the variety of skills required to get here? Was it the explorer in me, often the driving factor in my trips, or the solitude. We didn't see a soul for 15 hours, and then only a half-dozen people a mile from the trailhead.

It could also be that I came to understand that I trusted my climbing partner as much as myself, which I do not think is a common experience. Neither of us played the role of the guide. We were equals who shared in the adventure and the risk, and contributed to its success.

 

I wonder if at some future date, when I’ve gone soft in memories of experience, I remember my partner as much as the features of an amazing trip to McHenry's Notch.