One of us should have said something. 3 inches of new snow here in Golden and I was going to meet Pete for a couple 8-9,000 foot peaks in Douglas county. We knew there would be scrambling involved so we anticipated some increased difficulties. We should have slept in and visited Clear Creek Canyon for some more ice climbing. Instead we spent 2 hours driving to Sheep Nose.
From the burned forest we passed through on the short walk from car to peak it was obvious this was going to be interesting. I’d climbed the peak in late April before and found a little wet rock and a bit of ice that made the 4th class gully a bit more difficult. We’d definitely find snow today, but ice? At least we brought along a short rope, a small rack, crampons and an ice tool each.
We stayed low until we were nearly directly below the saddle between the north and south summits of Sheep Nose and then we began the hike up. One benefit of doing this hike on a cold day – the thorn bushes didn’t penetrate our many layers.
We found the same gully I’d ascended before and moved the gear from packs onto our waists and heads. I decided to start the climb without crampons which worked fine. Brushing 3+ inches of snow off the rocks to search for holds was the most tedious part. I remembered joking to Pete to bring the windshield scraper with a large brush from his truck, it actually would have been very useful.
Eventually I located a decent stance in the gully and a crack for a simple anchor and belayed Pete up. Here I looked at a left hand variation of the gully, thinking I might prefer steeper rock with positive holds to snowy slabs on the right. I got partway up and found myself contemplating a far too committing move to overcome a small bulge for the small rope and minimal gear. I carefully downclimbed then took the devil I knew and found the rest of the gully not too bad.
After topping out I located an anchor complete with a belay cave to stay out of the snow and belayed Pete up. Upon topping out he pondered “Why the F* are we here? We should be watching the Olympics.” I reminded him that this was his idea as I’d already climbed this peak. At least the crux was behind us and we could carefully deal with the 3rd class snowy boulders to the summit.
As we reached the summits the weather gods seemed to take some pity on us and while the sun didn’t exactly shine, the clouds did lessen and it was definitely lighter. We ate a bit on the summit and thought about the journey down before reversing all our moves to the belay cave.
Pete found a perfect boulder to rappel off and our 30 meter rope got us right back to the belay stance in the middle of the gully.
A short scramble to a tree and our next rappel was anchor was reached. Pete pulled down the rope and then tossed me the ends. His second toss was a revenge for all the snow I’d knocked down on him while leading as the rope sailed into the snow-laden branches above my head and heavily dusted me.
The second rappel returned us to easy ground and we marched out following our tracks and decided to return when it was warmer and dryer for the other summits in the vicinity.
The Journey Is Home 