Mt. Columbia

Route: Harvard and Columbia Traverse
Posted On: 7/14/2025, By: Paterclimber
Info: My friends and I received dual degrees from Harvard and Columbia today. The dog was even awarded dual doctorates. As you make your way from one campus to the other, you'll still encounter a number of snowfields (see pictures of two examples). Several of them require crossing. Most of them are in the talus field below the connecting ridge. For the ones we crossed, we opted not to use the spikes we had with us and managed fine. One of the last snowfields, as you're approaching Columbia and nearing the end of the talus field, is steep. Do read carefully the route description of the traverse found on this site. These schools are selective, and receiving dual admission on the same day is difficult. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 6/30/2025, By: ColoNativeGal
Info: Not much different/new from 6/25/25 conditions post. Small patches of snow at the top, avoidable and a couple have nice boot prints through them. No traction needed. The new CFI portion of the trail is amazing...thank you for your incredible work! Wildflowers are beautiful! 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 6/26/2025, By: brian4328937
Info: Pretty much no snow left. Small patches near the top but avoidable. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 6/23/2025, By: terribletigzy
Info: There is a little bit of snow to go around near 11,500 where the trail starts to really steepen up. Other than that, the route is snow free until you get to the ridge around 13,500 or so. The snow that remains above there is very minimal and easily avoidable. No spikes needed, summer conditions. Windy day up high. The ridge was relentlessly windy, but the summit was strangely calm. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 6/25/2025, By: jennincolorado
Info: There is a patch of snow closer to tree line that is easy to walk through. On Friday the 20th there were three snow fields to cross on the ridge up above 13,700. Two likely not to entirely melt out anytime soon. One is pretty flat, the others are a bit steeper. I keep seeing the term "easily avoidable" but this isn't entirely true. That depends on your comfort level and with the insane wind up there as of late, easily avoidable will be determined by the climber/hiker and how you feel navigating down/around on the ridge. I did not think these were easily avoidable, and I've done 30 14ers. People going over the snow "easily" at regular pace with or without spikes depending on your comfort level to reach the summit. If snow up top scares you, bring the spikes, they're not heavy! 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 6/2/2025, By: rmcpherson
Info: Started from the trailhead at 5:45 AM. No snow on route, or easily avoidable, until 13.5k feet. Around 13.6k feet the ridge steepens and there is consistent snow on the crest. We transitioned to microspikes and gaiters at this point and were able to ascend quickly on solid snow from there all the way to the summit. No more than 10-15 posthole steps on the entire route and snowshoes were not necessary. Summited at 10:45. No sign of any other people, either by our route or the standard route, on the ascent. We met two groups ascending the SE ridge on the descent. Back at the trailhead by 2:30 PM. Beautiful route (I prefer it to the scree slog of the standard route) as long as the snow is in. With soft snow, this would be difficult as above about 13.6k the snow would be hard to avoid without dropping to the SW/W side of the ridge on the last mile before the summit and this side becomes steeper near the summit. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 5/25/2025, By: Kcmartinez22
Info: Great day on Columbia's SE ridge! Snow free all the way to tree line, and then mostly avoidable snow to above13k. Consistent snow from where the standard joins the ridge to the summit. No special gear or snowshoes needed. Poles may have been nice but we had huskies in tow. I put spikes on to go down and they were not necessary. A little awkward getting around the class 2 rocks on the ridge. Some postholing, especially on the steep slope leading up to 13,200 where it was waist deep. We clocked it at 5500 ft gain and 13.3 miles. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 5/23/2025, By: butlerer
Info: This trip had everything you could hope from a spring 14er--incredible views, fun and challenging terrain, ski/skating down on spikes, blue skies and sunshine, post holing into a (shallow) stream, summit ridge wind gusts, and a great, quiet day on the mountain. Slopes were icy and wind blown in spots. Spikes were necessary, especially in the wind. Snow was expectedly soft on the way down and needed floatation for several miles. Opted out of the traverse as it looked too snowy/icy for my day. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 5/4/2025, By: kelseyycarol
Info: Perfect weather day for the southeast ridge! There were two moose, a mama and baby right on the trail, not even a half mile in. The trail was dry for the first mile and a half-ish then got a little patchy with snow. Tree-line and above was dry for the most part. Most of the snow was avoidable on the ridge, until right about where standard meets up, lots of snow still on the ridge to the summit. Didn’t need or use spikes or snowshoes all day. We saw 3 others out there today, who I believe all went up standard then we saw them go down the couloir on boards. 

Route: Southwest Couloir
Posted On: 4/29/2025, By: Omatt89
Info: Warning, the trail is covered in lots of snow most of the way. As, in 400 feet from the TH, the snow starts. It is mostly continuous the rest of the way. A couple dry patches. I would highly suggest going very early, or on a cloudy overcast day. The trail is pretty crazy right now. Definitely doable, mostly due to a solid boot pack leading the way, but you have to push it hard. I did not use traction or flotation on the way up or the way out. 70 percent chance of snow slowly rolled in and out around 11/12 and kept conditions firm so I could hike out. By 4 ish it looked like the storm really rolled in. Little wind. The couloir is pretty long and very steep at the top. The snow was crusty and fresh in places above 13000, around 11am conditions finally softened up a little in the middle of the couloir. A dirt patch to cross below the choke. Adventure skiing in the avy runout area. Adventure hiking in the woods. Lots of snow, go early and or fast and or on a overcast day. Or the snow will take at least a month to melt down. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 4/17/2025, By: sthoward2009
Info: Started hiking around 7 am and there is snow on the road so I couldn't drive to the trailhead but just added about 1/2 mile to the start of the hike. I got up to the base of Columbia without too much difficulty but the going was a little slow since its my first time on this trail. I was following a hiking track that wasn't always easy to see and missed the turn off to Columbia but circled back once the valley opened up above the treeline. Made it up to 12900 ft but turned around because it got super windy and I hit my turnaround time. Later it did get overcast and more windy and dropped some graupel and fortunately I was already down in the valley below the treeline. I postholed a lot on the hike back down. I thought snowshoes would make more of difference and they did in the morning but afternoon temps got too high for them to be effective. 

Route: Harvard and Columbia Traverse
Posted On: 3/10/2025, By: tothestars
Info: Successful summit of Mt. Columbia for the first time. Adam and I began the climb from where Colorado Trail crosses North Cottonwood Road and took the off-trail Columbia/Harvard Traverse. We were hoping to hit both peaks. We did not anticipate how long Columbia would take and turned around after Columbia summit and a down climb to check out the descent/climb to Harvard. We decided to not go to Harvard as we did not bring enough water or food and the 2.4mile-ish (one way) descent and climb there looked...challenging. After you leave the Colorado trail, the route bushwhacks up, over and around many snow humps and fields and is slow going both on the ascent and the descent. Route finding back down was slower than we expected due to the mixed and variable snow/rock/bushwhacking. Beautiful views of Yale the entire way up. We could've managed without snow shoes the whole way but they were helpful on some short sections where you're climbing soft sink-y snow humps. Unfortunately it's so mixed between dry/rock and snow that it may just be better to not use them. Crampons were helpful on descent from the top of the peak to the dry rides before the treeline AND through trees as we decided not to use snowshoes but definitely postholed from time to time unexpectedly up to our waists. All in all with an hour at the summit and some down climbing to check out the route to Harvard from the top of Columbia, the day took 12 hours, with 8hr moving time- that's just up and back to Columbia. As this site says, the route is definitely long... seems much longer than the mileage or elevation gain would indicate. Going to try to go back to hit Columbia and Harvard this week in one go if the weather holds up. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 2/23/2025, By: masonzastrow
Info: Successful summit! Four of us were on the mountain today, but I think the other two turned around because one of them didn't have snowshoes. Between us four, we put in a good trench to treeline. Despite forecasted winds of ~10 mph, winds over the east-west portion of the ridge were downright nasty. Be prepared with a face covering, even if the forecast is favorable! There was a moose right off the Colorado trail portion and a big group of rams up near the ridge at about 13,200. Cached snowshoes at 11'900 I think, definitely the right move. 

Route: From Frenchman Creek
Posted On: 2/18/2025, By: GreatGlissader
Info: Was going for Harvard, but trail-breaking made things take longer than planned, so went up Columbia instead. Trail was broken up to somewhere past 11k, then it was mid thigh deep snow for a while. Went up the south side of the basin to try and get out of the snow and onto more bare areas. Things got a little better around 12.2k. Made it to the base of Harvard east face, but time was going by, so we saw a ridge that went up to Columbia and took that. It worked. Probably less windy than the SE ridge. If you see a husky, that might be Basqy. He followed us 3.5mi to camp, then we texted the owner with inreach and had to walk him back a few miles to meet the owner. So be aware if you see him he might tag along the rest of the day, but he's a good dog. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 1/27/2025, By: bigfoot1
Info: Third time's the charm! Successful summit finally. I've got a cold or something and my lymph nodes are the size of golf balls so I decided to do an easier hike today. I was expecting my old trench to still at least be visible... but it was not. So I got to break out the ridge again. Tons of moose and deer/elk poop. Snow was all unconsolidated faceted tiny little marbles, and probably over 10.5k ft, it was regularly coming up to my knee and mid thigh. Had to kick in steps 3 times on each foot and was still sliding back down on every step and I started like punching the snow with my hands to get more of it out of the way. Needless to say, this was a very slow going process. I didn't keep track of when I took my snowshoes on/off, but above treeline is generally pretty bare but I carried my snowshoes with me all day so I could put them on and take them off as needed. The southwest ridge was pretty dry so I figured I would take the summer route down to save some time and run out. Shouldn't take longer than 2 hours to get back to the car from Columbia... right? Biggest mistake I have ever made in my life. Ridge is dry going down until about 12.8k ft and then I decided to pick my own adventure and veer off the summer route and got rocks in my shoes. Around 12k ft, I cut almost over to the southwest couloir and followed that down and out. The snow slabs are all really stable. Because I didn't take the real way down, I had some trouble finding the trail and just kind of bushwacked back to basin trail. The snow down low here is really really really deep (chest level in some places but I am kinda bad at picking good lines) and there are spruce traps and tons of hidden downed trees that my snowshoes would catch on. Unless you want to be miserable, don't follow my tracks. I also figured because back in November, the basin trail was pretty popular, so it would obviously be broken out. It was not. There has been NO ONE on that trail in probably over a month, so I got to break that out as well. I was pretty cranky because my easy day had turned into a misery slog so the tracks aren't super nice. Definitely not even close to trenched. At some point, a moose helped break out some of the trail for me which was nice. Solid hard trench on this trail (starting from the parking area at the end of the road) ends around ~10k ft, so not very far. I saw the moose on my road walk out, but wasn't fast enough to grab a picture.