One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: March 25, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1987_0606_PalisadeMtn.htm)
(A
Fourteener
trip report.)
I climbed Quandary Peak for a second time. It was a relatively easy Fourteener in the Mosquito Range of Colorado, a bit southwest of Breckenridge and northwest of Hoosier Pass. "Just" to make it challenging, I climbed the mountain at night and was on top to watch the sunrise...
Saturday, June 20: This afternoon I drove down from Fort Collins. I paused at the Breckenridge Inn just as Paul and Carolyn Beiser checked in. I elected to continue down to the mountain that evening despite marginal weather. By 1730 I was on the road along the base of the mountain. It was a dirt road that headed west from Colorado nine a couple of miles north of Hoosier Pass. The road was rough but passable by cars along Monte Cristo Creek all the way to upper Blue Lake (a reservoir above a dam) at about 11760'.
As the weather still looked ugly I forewent my plan of climbing the mountain that evening and camping high on its ridge. Instead I explored around the valley. There were several old mining buildings precariously perched in the most amazing places high up on steep slopes above cliffs.
I decked out by my car on a flat pull-off north of the road at about 11160'... Had dinner and watched clouds follow clearings across the sky from the west. Sunset was marvelous. I could tell from the sun on the peaks to the east that the skies were clear behind the pink clouds overhead.
Sunday, June 21: At about 0030 I woke up after half a night's sleep. The night sky was dark, moonless, clear, and full of stars. At this point I had to make a tough decision... Get a good night's sleep and hike with the Beisers in the morning, or do something "completely different" and head up the mountain for sunrise? I chose the latter.
At 0115 I headed north from camp using a headlamp up a steep, tree- and brush-covered hillside. I must have not been "all there" cause I put one of the batteries in backwards... Well they lasted a couple of hours anyway.
Climbing at night wasn't that tough so long as I was careful and knew where I was going. I could only see 50-100' ahead with the light, but that was enough to pick out a passable route up firm talus and on narrow paths through brush. Generally I headed right to avoid the steeper gullies further west. I could see the main ridge as I climbed, and reached it at 0215.
The rest of the route west to the summit followed the ridge with a decent trail most of the way up. I could see lights in the distance, and occasionally cars going over Hoosier Pass. The surrounding mountains were giant, dark, silent monoliths. Quandary itself rose to infinity ahead to meet the stars. Most people would find it eerie and scary being up there in the darkness... I was exhilarated!
I came across the ridge trail. I discovered that I could follow it without a light for a hundred feet at a time before losing and having to search for it. During occasional breaks I got rather cold and had to add layers of clothing. But thanks to catching some sleep earlier I was reasonably awake, unlike several years ago when I climbed Longs Peak at night and wanted to collapse at every break.
I plodded up the ridge from 12100' to 13100' and to the summit at 14265'. There were occasional shooting stars. The Milky Way stretched overhead like a cloud. The waning crescent moon rose along with Jupiter at about 0215. It added enough light to cast a shadow and to help me keep on the trail without my fading headlamp. (Of course I had three extra flashlights along -- small ones -- but I didn't even need them.)
At 0435 I gained frozen snow just below the summit and followed the tracks up it to the top. The entire summit ridge was still covered by a steep-sided wall of snow about 4' deep. This was quite unexpected -- the first time I climbed Quandary on June 23, 1979, the summit was clear.
So I found myself on top of Quandary Peak alone, an hour before sunrise, with the sky brightening to the east. It was cold of course, about 28 degrees F an hour later at sunrise, with stiff breezes. It was also magnificent and peaceful... An unimaginable intensity of peace and silence. Waiting for sunrise I took pictures. I wrote a short bit of prose, more special to me than any trip report, but I was too shy to share it (believe it or not) -- until later (grin): Look here.
There were no words to capture the experience of a brilliant daybreak on top of a mountain. The many pictures I took probably didn't do it justice either. Three things stand out in my memory:
I roamed around the summit and down the ridge a ways west to some increasingly-technical 14000' pinnacles. It started to get warm... Thanks to the night climb, for once I had copious free time on top, a rare treat.
Using a page from my Heading and Distance Charts book I spent over an hour studying the horizon with binoculars... Identified 32 other Fourteeners, including Longs Peak and Pikes Peak, both about 68 miles away.
But the real surprise was spotting Humboldt Peak and the Crestones in the Sangre de Cristo Range! Turned out they were 103 miles south-east. That was far and away the farthest I'd identified any features from on top of a mountain... So far away that their local vertical was about 1.5 degrees off that at Quandary due to the curve of the earth!
Other people started arriving around 0820. Paul and Carolyn reached the top at about 0900. There was quite a crowd. At 1005 we three took our leave and dropped over the south side.
We looked for and found the famous glissade route down the south couloir. To our disappointment, probably due to the warm spring weather and copious rain there was surprisingly little snow in the gully. Eight years ago Scott Wang and I rode down from just a bit below the summit without even using ice axes. This time we did a lot of careful downclimbing on steep and rotten rock, skirting the dirty and frozen snow. (It didn't look like a good summer for glissading.)
Halfway down we started to pick up acceptable stretches of snow to ride, carefully avoiding rocks. We found ourselves at the Blue Lake dam at 1135, took a break, and hiked down the road and back to our cars at 1215.
My time to the summit wasn't great... 3:25 for 3105'. I attribute that to being out of shape, carrying a heavy pack, and climbing at night. But I got to spend 5:25 on the summit. Our descent only took 2:10.
(Next trip report: 1987_0621_55th14er.htm)