Our friends Rolf and Kristen had invited us to join them on their third attempt at Arrow Peak, a high "semi-technical" thirteener which is the 104th highest mountain in Colorado. Their previous attempts had been thwarted by weather, and it looked at first as though this one might be as well; the rain began around 9 am, an hour and a half after we started hiking from the Molas Lake trailhead.
Pictures: view from the trail toward the Needles and Grenadiers; Kristen and me dressed for the weather.
Arrow
Peak is not exactly an easy affair. Before one even gets to the peak one
must hike eight miles -- the last few on a very steep and unmaintained
route. And although the hike begins with a good trail, it also begins
with 2600 feet of elevation loss, resulting in a total climb of nearly 3500
feet just to the camping area in Vestal Basin. And did I mention that it
was raining?
The
rain finally stopped as we approached the beaver ponds six miles in, where we'd
be leaving the good trail and heading more or less straight up for Vestal
Basin. Looking up the creek valley gave us a view of cloud-shrouded Arrow
Peak, with Vestal Peak (13,864') behind it.
As we ate lunch and contemplated the weather, two rangers on a 9-day tour came by and stopped to chat with us for a while. They were both young women, wearing huge packs and toting trail-work tools (one carried a shovel and the other had an axe strapped to her pack) and were cheerful about their trip despite the rain. They planned to camp at Vestal Basin that night but first had work to do by the beaver ponds.
The
hike from the beaver ponds to the meadow at the base of Arrow Peak was
excruciating. Steep as steep can be, slippery with the recent rain, and
thick with downed logs -- Kristen counted that she stepped over 95 of
them! I felt sluggish and slow, partly because I'd added to my pack
weight by picking wild mushrooms. The King Boletes were plentiful, and we
also found a large stand of scaly urchins (Hydnum imbricatum -- in photo), one
of our favorites. (A nice closeup.)
We set up camp, relaxed, drank a little tequila, and had a huge dinner (complete with mushrooms). Before we turned in, the rangers stopped by, and we gave them a few mushrooms along with a brief ID lesson, since they said they'd never tried them. We crawled into our sleeping bags before 9 pm. Naturally, I woke several times in the middle of the night with the need to crawl out and pee, but I wasn't too unhappy since the sky had completely cleared and I was able to see Mars shining brightly above the mountains.
We
did not quite get an alpine start the next morning, but did manage to get
underway shortly after 8 am -- although after perhaps a quarter
mile's walk, Britt discovered the camera batteries were nearly dead and had to
race back to the tent to get new ones. The sky had become cloudy again,
but the clouds were fast moving and small, and gradually diminished during the
day until it became perfectly clear in mid-afternoon, so our somewhat late
start was not a problem. In fact, it was probably good, because on our
approach we met a party returning from Arrow who had started much earlier --
and if we'd started earlier, they'd still have been on the mountain above us,
possibly (inadvertently) kicking rocks on our heads. And we had better
summit weather than they did!
At
Arrow's base we scoped out our route, which I've marked on the picture
above. Alas, it wasn't marked on the actual peak, and we did have a few
moments where an incorrect choice made things more difficult than they needed
to be. Supposedly this, the easiest route on Arrow, is no harder than
third class (I'd say fourth class) if you make all the right choices, but we
all made a few climbing moves on our way up. We also admired the classic
Wham Ridge route on Vestal Peak just to the east (the photo to the left) ; this
is low fifth class (again, only if you make all the right choices), and there
were at least two parties climbing it the day we were there.
Pictures: I prove it's a "walkup"; me climbing (fourth class, I'd say!); Rolf and a lovely view.
Pictures: scrambling on a sea of rock; approaching the summit ridge; on the summit ridge
On the first part of the ascent we moved back and forth between smooth, low-angle slabs that were just possible to actually walk on (if one maintained good balance and trusted one's boot soles), and blocky outcroppings which were interspersed with grassy areas. The loose rock was mostly on the blocky bits near the edges of the slabs, but whenever one of us accidentally set a rock tumbling it usually kept going. (We all wore helmets, but Britt and I don't have real mountaineering helmets and so wore bicycle helmets instead.)
Of
course we all periodically stopped to admire the scenery, which included an
awesome view of Vestal's Wham Ridge (with one of the Trinity peaks
beyond), Vestal Lake and the unnamed lake at the head of the valley, and three
ptarmigan which were hanging out in a grassy patch along our route.
At the top of the slabby region we had a bit of a routefinding adventure, looking for the "easy chimney" that led to the summit ridge. Britt made a wrong choice which required some exciting moves to get out of; Rolf and I both picked easier, but still incorrect (and thus harder than necessary) routes. From above, though, we figured out where we should have gone, so Kristen followed this easiest path, and of course we all took it on the way down.
The weather had gotten even more beautiful by the time we reached the summit, and we hung out there for a long time, eating lunch, watching the climbers on Wham Ridge, and identifying all the mountains we could see. The picture just to the left is Pigeon Peak, another high thirteener with a tremendously sheer northeast face. We also saw a pika (a small mountain-dwelling rodent) which tried to steal our lunch -- bad pika! Unfortunately he refused to pose for a picture.
Finally we headed down, under a perfectly blue sky. Downclimbing is, of course, harder than upclimbing, but since we'd seen it all before and knew not where to go, we were able to keep exciting moments to a minimum. I'd hate to have to downclimb in rain, though. We did see an old piton which some previous party must have set to protect a steep section -- maybe they had to downclimb in the rain.
Kristen was getting a headache, so at the base of the climb proper she opted to head back to camp; the rest of us continued back to the small pothole where we'd gotten water and cached some gear, then hiked first to Vestal Lake and then to the unnamed but large lake at the head of the valley under the Trinity peaks. (It really should have been named Trinity Lake, but that name had somehow been attached to a lake on the other side of the saddle.) Britt had brought (and cached) his collapsible fishing rod and made a valiant try at each of the lakes, even though there was no sign of fish in either, and predictably caught nothing.
Pictures: Vestal Lake; should-be-Trinity-Lake; the Vestal Valley as we headed back to camp.
The
high route we took to the lakes consisted almost completely of strenuous
rock-hopping, so naturally we took long breaks at each lake, which meant that
we headed back to camp at a fairly late hour. We still got nice views of
the Vestal Valley and of Vestal Peak with a tiny crescent moon above. We
made it back well before dark, in time to drink the rest of the tequila
(medicine for aching muscles!) and have a big dinner. We were all fairly
exhausted after this strenuous day, coming as it did on the heels of the
previous strenuous day, so we turned in early and slept late.
The
good weather held the next day for our hike out. The first part of
the hike down Vestal Valley was so steeply downhill that it astonished us that
we'd actually hiked up that crazy trail. When we got to the spot with the
profusion of scaly urchins, Britt and I made up for the weight of the food
we'd consumed by picking lots of them to pack
out. We also amused ourselves by counting all the different
species of mushroom that were in that one area -- there were dozens, most of
which we didn't know. At the beaver pond we got a nice view
back up to Vestal and Arrow.
Unfortunately, since the trip had started with a big elevation drop we had to make it up on the way back. I think Britt and I felt the extra weight of each and every mushroom we carried! But it was far nicer going up in the cool, clear weather than it had been hiking down in the rain, and we made good time getting back to the trailhead.
