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Date: November 14, 2001
Elevation: 14,265'
Rank: 13th
Route: West Ridge, Grade I, Class 3, 5.6 miles, 2600ft vert.
GPS: N 39° 23.833' W 106° 6.35'
Team: Matt Esser (Toid)
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Quandary Pk Trip Report:
Pre-climb: Well, I have never done a 14er before. In fact, the highest in elevation I think I have achieved is ~12,500ft. Because this guy and I decided to do Mt. Massive, I decided that I needed to get out and try something, just to see how everything goes down. Since I have tomorrow off work, and the weather was good, I decided that I needed to go try something...something big, something easy. Quandary is billed as a good winter testpiece. So I'm now getting all my gear together (literally in the case of my ice axe leash -- shoestring and climbing runner combo -- nothing but high class here baby) I'm probably going to carry too much crap...but ya know what...better me carrying it now, than when we climb Mt. Massive in another week, which is longer and harder. I'm sure I will know a lot more about what I need to get and stuff after I go, so I'm just going to stop writing here and go and do it, and let you know how it went after I'm done.
Climb: First off, I want everybody to know that I didn't mean to do the West Ridge. It was way more than I planned on doing. But the key word is plan here. I wanted to do the easy East Slopes. Notice the difference in terms there. East Slopes vs. West Ridge. Yeah...did I mention for about 2 miles the West Ridge is Class 4? (click here for a description of Grades and Classes) The book says it's Class 3, but in the conditions I was in, and occasionally going rock climbing, I know what a Class 3 scramble looks like, and this wasn't it. You shouldn't have to use your ice ax as a crowbar to pull yourself up and out of the snow while climbing on rocks. In no spots is the East Slopes harder than Class 1 (which is the route I *wanted* to do, and planned on doing). Let me tell you what happened.
The drive down there was awesome. I left my apartment at 3:30am, and for those of you that think that's insane, please realize that I work the graveyard shift at work...so the problem was actually me WAITING for 3:30 to come along. It was very peaceful though. The sky was clear, not a sound in an earshot's distance, and when I got to Breckenridge, all the shops were lit up, but nobody was around. Then I get to the turn-off on Summit County Rd 850. It was only supposed to be a 0.4 mile drive. However, when you get there, the parking lot that was there has a big sign that says no parking, you will be towed while on the mountain. I guess the neighbors didn't like all the climbers parking their vehicles near their houses. The next trailhead for this mountain was 2.2 miles down this backcountry road. Now, when I say backcountry road, I mean backcountry road. This one is pretty bad. There are hundred foot drop offs and ice everywhere (remember, this "road" is over 11,000ft in elevation) and here I am in my little Oklahoma pick'em up truck. Two-wheel drive of course. I get about 1.5 miles into it with extreme struggle, I finally reach this hill I can't make it up. Knowing I'm close to the parking lot, I try and try to make it up this last hill...finally one time, even while I'm still in forward low gear, I come back down the hill, on the ice, and into a ditch. I'm stuck. Screw it. I'm leaving my truck there. I can't get it out and if anybody has a problem with it I guess they will have to tow it to get it out of there. But I don't see a tow truck fitting down this road in the first place. I try getting out of my truck and the first thing I do is fall flat on my backside and hit my knee on my door. Great, now I have a bleeding knee and the temperature is right around 10F without the wind. Just get me away from this ice.
So I hike the remaining thousand feet to the parking lot and find the trailhead for the West Ridge. Well, to save weight in my pack for the hike, I didn't pack my guidebook which has a description of this hike. My reasoning here was I had the map and beta on the route I *was* going to climb, so why would I need a three pound book describing a route to EVERY route on EVERY fourteener? Anyways, I only packed the description of the easier hike and a topo map. But I figure, since I rock climb on Class 5 all the time...a few miles of "Class 3" wouldn't be that bad right? Most of it's "Class 2" anyway. So I start hiking and discover an abondoned mine. I take a picture and I turn around and take a picture of the sun because it was just coming over the mountains to the east. As I'm hiking I see a snow fox and a lot of pesky chipmunks running around. The trail through here is pretty easy to follow for the most part...but I was doing a lot of postholing. (Where your foot goes really deep into the snow and you wish you had snowshoes, but sometimes those don't even help). I started climbing up the valley and reached the ridge. I took a well-deserved break. Now, mind you, I have taken many breaks trying to hike up this valley, but this was my first sit-down kind. I get out my nalgenes (water bottles) and I start drinking. Next thing I know the wind picks up, and me being on a ridge with one side being this huge valley, and this other side being this sharp dropoff to a lake at 12,535ft. I'm at 13,400 on the ridge. Yeah, that's a ways down. Anyhow, I try to grab all the stuff I had out of my pack, and I knock off my nalgenes because well, I had huge gloves on and I wasn't very agile. Damn. There went all my water.
So I start hiking east on the ridge and I notice two things. One, of course, there's a lot more exposure. And two, this is a hell of a lot more work than I was expecting. Well, sure enough it's Class 4 through here and not Class 3 like the book says. Now, sometimes when rock climbing, Ben (my usual partner) and I, rope on some sketchy Class 4's. But that wasn't exactly an option at this point. Here I am, alone, without any climbing gear, nobody in sight, and I haven't ever climbed this technical of a route in snow before. And I'm talking 3ft deep snow. I am having to work just to move 5 ft. I don't see how anybody could climb Everest. But at least the elevation by this point wasn't getting to me anymore, I didn't have time to think about that. So I stopped after going over a few towers with "mere" 1000 ft dropoffs if I slipped, or what seemed more likely the case -- the rock that I was holding onto came out from under the snow. I was tired. I didn't think I would ever make it, I kept thinking the next one of these false summits I go over will actually be the one, but they keep coming, and they keep getting taller and harder to traverse. I fell over in the snow exhausted. Here I am, doing all this work at 14,000 ft without water and very little food, and nobody in sight. I took a nap. I know it's the worst thing to do, because you can catch hypothermia. But I couldn't move. My legs were way too weak to do anything else, and I just wasn't mentally there. I was plenty warm, because now it was up to a balmy 35F. About 20 minutes later I woke up and I felt much better, I told myself go over one more and see what you can see. I knew I didn't want to turn around, and I knew if I reached the summit I could descend a much easier route, so that was my prime motivation to get to the summit, not because it was the summit. (If that makes any sense) I didn't care about making the top at this point. I just wanted down. But then once I got down I would have to deal with my truck that was in a ditch and that didn't make me too excited either.
As I went over the next tower, I noticed that "only" four towers over, there was the one with the summit marker. Finally, even though it was a long ways away, I could at least see it. The guidebook describes these last towers I have to climb over the hardest yet, and with big-time exposure. Well, climbing Devil's Tower in the summer got me used to the exposure thing, but what I wasn't used to was climbing with an ice axe. I have to admit, that thing is the best thing invented since, well I don't know, cause I don't frankly know when it was invented, but still, it saved my life a few times. Like when I was start to slip I could use it to self-arrest me from sliding off a cliff. And when I was climbing, I could use it to get holds that I couldn't reach and to jam it in a crack and pull-up on it. Not to mention how it uses as a hiking cane in the first place. So, to make a long story short, I get over the last tower and from here it's an "easy" (relative here) walk up to the summit, I get to the summit, sign the stupid piece of paper, and collapse. Again I sleep and don't wake up this time for 45 min. When I do wake up, I see the trail for the east slops, however, I don't see the trail for the quickest way down...it's called "Cristo Couloir" and it's basically straight down this Couloir. So I just started walking down. Now this thing is steep. It drops 2,600 ft in one mile. That's a 30 degree angle, using some math skills I learned in school. It took me a little over 3 hours to get down, because I didn't want to start tumbling, but it was definitely not as challenging as the ridge. This was only Class 2, but still after a 7 hour summit, this felt a lot harder. I just wanted water, by this point I was really feeling weird. My lips were really chapped and I couldn't swallow very easily. Eating snow helped relieve it a little, but not much. I make it down to the road where my truck is, and the fun is just starting. The whole way down I was thinking if I just wanted to take a nap in my truck to regain some strength...the strength I would need to get my truck out of a ditch...or if I wanted to just do it, get it out of there and sleep like a baby when I got home. It was now getting dark out, and well, the temperature was down below freezing again, and so I knew I had to get it out of there ASAP because frost would start setting in and everything would be just that much more icy. Ditch digging is hardwork. Especially at around 11,700ft after climbing for 10hrs...without water. Oh, and the only tool I have is my ice axe to dig with. After 1 hr of digging I get my truck out of there. However...I'm backwards. I would have to drive in reverse the complete 1.7 miles on a backcountry summit road, in the dark, with no real lights behind my truck. Of course, now that I have finally sit down, my legs don't want to move, and my neck doesn't want to turn around and look backwards. But I did it anyway, and made it out of there. I drove home, practically falling asleep on the way, and came back to my apartment and slept for 14 hrs until now, when I'm writing this. I'm sore, and I've learned a lot.
Lesson One: Don't drive a two-wheel drive into the backcountry. Lesson Two: Make all attempts necessary to do the trail you planned for, if you can't do it, then call it all off. Lesson Three: Bring water, lots of it, and don't get it all out at once. Lesson Four: An Ice Axe is invaluable. Lesson Five: Don't make your first fourteener a solo attempt, especially without knowing all the previous Lesson's.
All in all, yesterday was fun for about 1 hour as I hiked up the valley and I was caught up in how peaceful and quiet everything was. I wanted solitude and I was getting it. But that would all come to an end as I got to the ridge and dropped my water. After that, things turned bad and climbing wasn't any fun. Had I gone up the East Slopes like I planned to, things would have been different and much easier and I could have enjoyed it a little more. I guess, in the end I got what I asked for.
Pictures: (Click on picture for caption)
Profile:
Time:
| Drive |
Ascent |
On Summit |
Descent |
Digging |
Drive |
Total |
| 2.5 h |
7 h |
45 min |
3.25 h |
1 h |
2.5 h |
12 h |
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