Squaw Mountain – Jimmy’s Initiation
January 31st, 2010 11:03 pm by Matt in 11ers, Climbing, Trip Report | No Comments(1130 words and 61 views)
Date: January 30th, 2010
Elevation: 11486 ft
Route: Squaw Pass, Grade I, Class 1, 4.0 miles 850ft vert
GPS: 39.68020°N 105.4945°W
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Jimmy Clinton
Pre-climb: One evening as I was sitting around watching football on TV with Jimmy, he mentioned to me that now that he has moved here to Colorado from Texas, he would like to have a near death experience…errr, I mean, climb a mountain in winter. Ah, and that’s the best part about Jimmy, he uttered the words that he trusted me wholeheartedly to pick a climb that would be a good one to do, without having a lot of exposure and snow. All that was left to do was for me to pick out which mountain to climb. However, after the e-mail I sent him mid-week for “encouragement”, (in an attempt to pump him up for the climb), I mistakenly mentioned some key phrases like “avalanche” and “crevasse”…and after reading his response, I might have been a little over the top. In hindsight I hope he didn’t go and increase his life insurance policy for this climb. (Sorry, Jimmy) Thus, ultimately I decided to downgrade the magnitude of what was to be our epic journey and chose Squaw Mountain because the route had no exposure, little snow accumulation, and a pretty cool unique feature at the summit…a fire lookout tower! Plus the summit was only 11,486ft. (I say only, but I’m pretty certain that is about half a mile higher in elevation than anything in Texas)
Climb: We left Jimmy’s house around 6:50am and started the drive to Evergreen, where we would catch the back-road that headed towards Echo Lake and Mt. Evans. It’s called Squaw Pass Road, and it’s paved the whole way, although one might not have known this because most of it was covered in snow, and there wasn’t a guard rail. I mention this fact because we were riding in Jimmy’s new ride which he quietly mentioned (as we were driving) did not have four wheel drive and had three different kinds of tires on it. Plus he gets nervous when driving on roads that have exposure. Not to worry though, I was on a mission to expand his mind and help him get comfortable with how we roll in Colorado and whatever speed we needed to drive at was fine with me. He did great!
It was a gorgeous drive up there, perfect weather actually…blue sky, bright sun, no wind and halfway warm for January. We were the first ones there that morning, and after making our own parking space in the snow, we started the hike up the service road to the top. Yes, yes, I know I said road, instead of trail, but its covered in snow and it would be a great start to the season.
The trailhead is at 10,634ft, and our first concern presented itself….how not to blind Jimmy. He left his sunglasses in the car, which is bad for a snow climb, and superbad if the sun is beaming down the path right in front of us. I tried giving Jimmy my extra set of goggles, but that just made things even brighter, and so we decided he would walk behind me and we would just head for the light at the end of the road.
We made good time, and only one portion of the road had any amount of snow buildup that caused us to posthole. The snow wasn’t very packed down and it appeared that only one person has been on the trail since the last snow occurred and happened to have had skiis because there was an envious set of tracks coming down.
Soon enough we were at the top, and the final push up the rocks to the summit hut presented itself. Jimmy quickly realized there was a trail through the rocks and became a rockstar and busted out the final bit. After hiking the whole way to the top, I was bummed to discover that they had everything in the fire lookout boarded up, even the stairs…oh well.
I did some exploration and BINGO! I discovered a picnic table on the opposite side of the lookout (that was pretty much on the edge of the summit). After some slight encouragement, Jimmy joined me over at the table and the first couple minutes were tense, as he mentioned he was waiting for his legs to relax. We enjoyed our views and there were plenty to be had. One could see from Longs Peak to Pikes Peak. And see Denver to Grays and Torreys. Evans and Bierstaedt were in perfect view and we discussed which mountains would be next. Soon after having some food, we noticed the first signs of other human life coming up the trail. Up and to this point we had not seen anybody else the entire morning…which is rare for a mountain so close to Denver, and on a Saturday no less.
As we descended we went over to the west summit to check the view out from over there and noticed that the fence actually said no trespassing, but oh well, there wasn’t that much over there to see, just some views of the new Echo Mountain ski area.
The descent went really fast as we were making great time and noticed everybody else headed up had one thing in common. They all had snowshoes, and we did not. So, either we are just that cool or just that dumb. Hmmmm…I’m going with the former.
In the end, Jimmy not only passed his initiation but he demonstrated a very important principle not just in climbing, but in life. We are all given a certain set of fears, abilities and interests, some of which are out of our control, but the one thing we can bring to the table in every situation is our attitude. Jimmy has an awesome attitude about life and about climbing and I can’t wait to head out to the backcountry again with him in the near future.
As far as additional information, this hike could be done with kids when the snow is melted, and I highly recommend it as an early winter training hike. We took the long way home by continuing up Squaw Pass Road until it connected with Mt. Evans Rd outside of Idaho Springs. We stopped for some good eating at Tommyknockers where Jimmy had his “salad”. The locally made chips were excellent and the root bear with pure cane sugar, Tahitian vanilla, and maple syrup just about put me into a coma.
Drive: 1.5h
Ascent: 1.25h
On Summit: 45min
Descent: 0.75h
Drive: 1.75h



























































































