"The Citadel"

Route: Standard, from Herman Gulch
Posted On: 7/14/2025, By: mijoflynn
Info: Hiked from Herman Gulch; a longer trail approach beats shorter willow-bashing any day of the week in my book. The area obviously got hail during last night's impressive lightning storms; a light film of snow started about a mile up and persisted until the sun finally poked out around 9:00. Don't have a lot to add to other CRs from the last week except a couple of pics of current conditions. Thanks to MaryinColorado's TR! 

Route: Citadel to Pettingell Traverse
Posted On: 7/12/2025, By: dwoodward13
Info: Summer conditions. Few snow patches remaining can easily be bypassed. Anchors in good shape. Fun day! 

Route: Citadel, Hagar and Golden Bear from dry gulch
Posted On: 7/7/2025, By: sheller
Info: We just climbed The Citadel, Hagar and Golden Bear from dry gulch. Conditions are great. All snow is easily avoidable except for one short section on the way to The Citadel. I brought spikes and didn't feel they were needed at all. The climbing was a lot of fun and felt it was solid class 3 with some easy class 4 sprinkled in the mix. Kind of a pain connecting Golden Bear back to the trail along Dry Gulch. 

Route: Herman Lake
Posted On: 7/5/2025, By: daway8
Info: Did not attempt to summit - just doing lake hikes with my brother, but posting mainly to point out that the wildflowers seem to already be pretty much at peak on the trail to Herman Lake. Also still a fair amount of snow surrounding the Citadel. 

Route: Southeast Face
Posted On: 6/30/2025, By: pbergmaier
Info: Steep snow continues to linger in the gully leading up to The Citadel's technical southeast face. To access the class 3/4 scrambling on the face up to the eastern summit, you must cross the top of this large snowfield. We crossed around 8am, and the snow was soft enough to kick in a bootpack across the gully. Ice axe and crampons highly recommended for the next few weeks until the snow melts out. 

Route: Snoopy's Backside
Posted On: 6/3/2025, By: astromuni
Info: Someone left a pair of Warby Parker glasses w/ a verrrry strong prescription about halfway up Citadel on Snoopy's. LMK if you want them back. 

Route: Snoopy's Couloir
Posted On: 5/4/2025, By: infinitealpine
Info: Successful summit via the couloir though I wouldn't say it's in prime condition. Conditions from TH up the gulch is full of snow. Once I got to where you can see up the couloir, snow was a mix of firm punchy snow to several inches of unconsolidated snow. There were lots of times towards the top where it was difficult to get steps in because of the softness. A party of 6 turned around due to fear of a slide but I flew a drone up the couloir before going up and I didn't see anything of concern, and this route doesn't hold a cornice. I also met a group of 3 skiers as I came down Citadel's summit, at the saddle, and they also made it up the couloir, so take that as you will. I didn't climb the other summit of Citadel because the climbing looked trickier, in crampons anyway. I used snowshoes for a mile on the way out. 

Route: Loveland Pass > Citadel > Dry Gulch
Posted On: 3/31/2025, By: awestra
Info: Yesterday I did a peakbagging outing from Loveland Pass to the Citadel. I hiked along the ridgeline and visited Golden Bear Peak and Hagar mountain along the way. The scrambling on the Citadel felt straightforward to me with crampons and an ice axe. I bailed on the ridgeline on the way back between Hagar and Golden Bear because I didn't want to be navigating cornices at night. Exited via Dry Gulch. I hitchiked from Dry Gulch TH back to Loveland Pass. I tried to take pictures of different slopes and features along the way which I hope someone may find helpful. 

Route: Snoopy’s Collar / South Face
Posted On: 3/29/2025, By: Danger_D
Info: Road isn’t melted to gate, so have to skin a little extra. Good skin track in place. Near where the trees end you can kick-turn up a face on climber’s right, or stay left and hit the cat-track from Loveland’s backcountry stuff. Boot pack up the ski line in place and in good shape. Collar couloir is pretty thin and there is a choke that was narrower than my 171cm skis that required some delicate, scratchy sidestepping (because I’m a coward). Snow was 4 inches of dust on bulletproof snow, and by the afternoon it was sun affected and grabby. A flat skin out which sucks for split boarders. Great type 2 fun day 

Route: Citadel East and West Summits traverse to Hagar
Posted On: 9/6/2024, By: jpacheco1982
Info: Started at dry gultch trailhead. Proceeded up the road which turned into a social trail. There was another social trail which veered east towards Mount bethel which started around where original path ended, took this up to above treeline before traversing over to second drainage which we took up to saddle that connects with social trail coming up from Herman gultch side. Took this to the summit towers and then went climbers left on some loose rock to hit the gully between the east and west citadel summits. Took this gully up a little bit before scrambling up on a rock rib towards west summit. After west summit went down to top of gully and did a short class 4 section followed by easy class 3 to summit the east citadel. We did not go down gully but instead traversed on some grassy ledges on lower part of west citadel summit block until finding a different gully which gave us access to ridge leading to citadel and Hagar saddle. Then traversed over to Hagar. There was some class 3 on this route and an optional class 4 section near summit which we did. The knife edge was not very scary and underwhelming. Descended off Hagar and went over bump just south of it, then descended to saddle before heading downwards and east to meet up with our ascent route. 

Route: From Herman Gulch
Posted On: 9/3/2024, By: SimplePole
Info: After exploring the terrain around the gully I have to second Tim Fab advice from https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/tripreport.php?trip=21364 The easiest way is: about halfway through the gully, or whenever feasible, climb on the rib on climber's left, see picture 3 from the above report. The terrain on the rib is well travelled and offers steep but easy scampering/scrambling all the way to the top. The upper half of the gully is currently sketch. 

Route: Hassell to Pettingell to Citadel
Posted On: 7/14/2024, By: wintersage
Info: The continuous ridge from Hassell to Pettingell towards The Citadel and the chimney itself are completely dry. Every occurrence of snow mentioned in the previous report has now melted, except for the lingering snowfield at the saddle between Bethel and the Citadel which didn't require any traction. The snowfield that sits below the southeast summit has receded enough to not be of much concern. 

Route: From Herman Gulch
Posted On: 6/30/2024, By: MidsizeAl
Info: Wildflowers are crazy right now. There is a snow field/bridge that gave us a little pause as it crossed the river a short bit beyond the lake, since a section that held several feet of snow had collapsed just downstream, but it seemed shallow enough and held fine. There is one lingering snowfield at the saddle between Bethel and the Citadel that was unavoidable, but it didnt require traction. Just steer clear of that cornice! I was able to skirt the snowfield that sits below the southeast summit by dropping a bit lower; it was quite loose, and I inadvertently sent a few grapefruit-sized rocks downhill, but never gave me any hesitation. Looks way worse from above. The saddle/gully between the SE summit and NW (true) summit is melted out, but was still pretty soggy, and was as scree-filled and loose as I had read. It is short lived, though, and wasnt terrible. What a lofty summit! 

Route: Pettingell to Citadel
Posted On: 6/24/2024, By: jtfoss1
Info: Started via the East ridge on Pettingell for some warm-up scrambling. We up-climbed the 5th class bit leading to the ridge to the Citadel and found it goes two ways: I climbed the chimney and my buddy started in the chimney and transitioned to the face after the bulge. After descending to the notch between the two peaks, there was quite a bit of snow which was a bit challenging in summer hikers without crampons or axe. 

Route: Snoopy's Collar
Posted On: 6/4/2024, By: Camden7
Info: Skied the East Face of Hagar and Snoopy's Collar/South Face of the Citadel from Dry Gulch. What a great couple peaks, so close to home. Somehow managed to forget gloves. Cold hands day. Hagar was my favorite 13er ski yet, snow is really good right now but melting fast, only skiable for another couple weeks? Snow line is about 11k but that will be a lot higher soon. Snoopy's Collar still had continuous snow but I can't imagine it will last much longer. I don't personally see Snoopy, but I enjoyed tracking up his collar.