After a 3:30 am wake-up, Pete and I are heading to the Glacier Gorge trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park. Thankfully, our drive has been shorted by being able to stay with a friend in Estes Park for the night. When we arrive at the trailhead we take a few minutes to scan the clear sky for meteors. I catch 3 in a couple minutes from the Perseid meteor shower.
Pete leads us up Glacier Gorge by headlamp, picking out a short cut that avoids Alberta Falls and speeds us on our way to Spearhead. The sky has lightened up by the time we reach Black Lake and the peaks around us begin to collect alpine glow.
Above Black Lake we pass treeline and pick our way along a cairned path through the willows and marsh to the base of the North Ridge of Spearhead.
Another group (who bivied here overnight) is already starting up the route and we begin to suit up in harnesses and helmets. The second is starting to climb the first pitch when I say I’m going to climb beside her on a different line.
I planned to follow the route information from Eli Helmuth’s site, which advised starting up the slabs then cutting into a gully before the main chimney system.
Above the gully I found some 5.6+ cracks that weren’t too much fun to climb in the cold morning with gloves on. I was nearing the end of the 60 meter rope when I reached the ledge we targeted for the belay. Pete soon followed the pitch.
Since we ran out the whole length of our rope we were already a bit ahead of the other group, whose leader was starting pitch 2 below me. He climbed past, as did his second just as I was starting the next pitch.
I found the other group just ahead of me starting their 3rd pitch and asked if I could climb the arete left of the chimney they were ascending. Above, the terrain mellowed and I quickly setup a belay and brought up Pete while the other group decided how far they wanted to push this pitch.
The terrain above was much gentler and could probably have been climbed unroped for a ways. Instead, I climbed up quickly and placed just a little protection and soon brought up Pete another 60 meters.
Our pitch 4 was just a little harder, but still fairly easy and by moving full rope lengths we increased the distance between us and the now 3 other groups below.
Pitch 5 contained several options of 5.6 to 5.8 climbing. I tended left (close to the Barb Flake formation) then up and a little right to keep the climbing closer to 5.6.
I was hoping to reach a belay ledge mentioned in Eli’s description, but didn’t have enough rope length so I setup on a smaller ledge that was shaded and windy.
Since the start of the climb, this was the first time I got a little chilled. Most of our route had been in the sun and the winds had been mild. At least the views of McHenrys Peak took my mind off the loss of heat.
Unlike our other spacious belays, this one was crowded and more exposed. Pete wasn’t totally comfortable here so I hurried up to make more room for him.
For our 6th pitch I followed a trail of chalk marks and a stuck tricam into a dihedral that tended left.
This led naturally to a leaning off-width crack that I got my whole body into and braced my shoulders and hips against the sides to make upward progress. Thankfully, it was short and the terrain quickly eased off above.
Pete had some trouble following this section with his pack on, but eventually cheated just a little to join me. We thought the technical climbing might be over now, so we started to scramble towards the summit.
We shortly came to a section that was 5th class. We could have avoided this by downclimbing and working around, instead we got the rope and rack back out to climb the short 25 foot section.
From here the summit was just class 3 scrambling.
But the views in all directions were amazing. Pagoda, Longs, Chiefs Head, and McHenrys dominated the views.
After enjoying the summit, we returned to a little notch where the the technical difficulties had truly ended.
From here a cairn marked the start of a route down the east side of the mountain. We followed some loose ledge systems and did a short class 4 downclimb to reach the boulders below.
The hike out was memorable to me for being able to see the terrain we’d passed through in the dark.
After our 11 hour and 15 minute day we drove to the Oskar Blues brewery for a dinner that would delay our drive through Boulder until after rush hour had calmed a bit.
[...] My own photos and such from the day are on my blog. [...]