8/17/2024 Route: East Ridge Posted On: 8/17/2024, By: astranko Info: I ascended the east ridge and descended the west ridge. Both ridges are fun, and it's absolutely worth doing the traverse if you're not just tagging this single mountain. There is a faint social trail wherever there can be. I'm guessing this one sees more traffic than the 14ers statistics would imply. There is no summit register, nor even summit cairn. The summit block is pretty devoid of loose rock, but if someone is feeling sprightly they could lug some up from ~30ft below. |
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7/2/2023 Route: East Ridge via Columbine Lake Trail Posted On: 7/2/2023, By: bryanpeck3 Info: Dry with a dozen downed trees until a touch of snow before treeline. A few minutes more without snow and then a huge, but pretty flat and easy, snowfield. Round the turn up onto the ridge and there are more snowfields than dry to the lake. Instead of continuing in snow to the lake, I went up most of the blocky knob east of the peak in (dry) loose talus/scree that became class 3 at the boulder's edge, took the easy/flat snow saddle to the peak's ridge, could have stayed class 2 on the ridge to/from the summit, and descended the snow filling the saddle (why I preferred staying dry on the ascent). |
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7/31/2021 Route: East Ridge Via Columbine Lake Trail Posted On: 7/31/2021, By: supranihilest Info: I parked at Burro Bridge instead of driving all the way to the trailhead. The road to the trailhead is single lane with few places to turn around and there's only room for a handful of cars at the trailhead, so walking the extra 0.9 miles and 400 or so vert might be prudent. Take the trail into the upper basin (so up all the switchbacks and then around a large C-shaped section of trail) and before reaching Columbine Lake you'll see 13,159 rising up to your left. There will be a saddle between the obvious summit on the right and a large, rocky block on the left; you bypassed this block on the C-shaped trail section. Head up to this saddle on tundra, talus, and scree, then scramble along the ridge to the summit at Class 2+. The rock on the ridge is loose but the scrambling easy and not too exposed. I descended the way I came up back to the trail but it appeared the west ridge is easy as well. |
