Plans kept changing on me until Saturday morning. After a lazy start I made the drive up to Vail and hiked a few miles into the Gore Range on the Booth Creek Trail. The were cloudy and threatened rain the whole way.
After 45 minutes of hiking through pretty aspen forests I reached Booth Creek Falls and enjoyed an early lunch while watching day hikers scramble on the cliffs to get a better view of the falls.
A short time above the falls I passed a spring and decided to make camp in the plentiful woods nearby. With threatening weather I didn’t want to camp higher up the valley.
All afternoon and most of the evening it rained and stormed. I continued my lazy morning’s routine by napping, reading or just watching rain drops slide down the outside of my tent.
During the night I was woken up by a mouse scurrying around and looking for salty snacks to nibble on. Once I came to my senses and realized my backpack was under attack, I chased the mouse away and moved the pack from my vestibule to the tent. The hip belt ended up with only a few superficial bite marks. Next, the mouse came back for my boots. I had to shake him out of one then move them inside as well. Around 3am he returned and took a few bites of the trekking pole handle that was supporting my shelter. I couldn’t do much more than kick at him since the pole was needed to keep the shelter upright.
Obviously well rested, I woke at 5am to high clouds. Yesterday’s lazy habits were behind me however, so I left camp at first light hoping I’d have tent free of mouse bites to return to. Cooper’s Colorado Scrambles guide book mentions an “obvious gully” to gain the ridge above. In the early morning, sans GPS, the “obvious gully” wasn’t. I was probably too anxious and took the first one which rapidly steepened into class 3 dirt and would have been dangerous for more than a solo climber.
Still, ascending earlier gave me more time on the class 3 ridge heading to West Partner Peak.
Some goat trails would lead right or left of the various gendarmes on the ridge, but most could easily be scrambled over. A few of the cliffs required a little more thought however.
Looking at my maps the night before, I noticed that in 1993 I’d tried to climb this mountain while on an Outward Bound program. We’d ascended a couloir from the valley northeast of the peak, but weather turned us around before the summit. I thought of how I climbed Mount Powell a year ago, another peak whose summit we attempted, but missed on Outward Bound, as West Partner’s top came into view.
It was only 8am, but the weather didn’t look good so I had a quick bite to eat then hustled down the west ridge of the mountain.
I followed the ridge crest for a ways, then dropped to my left towards the unnamed tarn at the head of the valley.
A light rain started just before I reached the tarn, but I didn’t put on a rain jacket until I reached Booth Lake. After descending a ways the rain had grown stronger and steadier, so I stopped to add my pack cover and rain pants.
The rain continued for my entire hike out. Luckily, my tent was unmolested.
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