This phase of the climb involved relentless scrambling and steep hiking over loose scree while wearing crampons and carrying ice tools due to the conditions. I even found myself doing some 4th class dry tooling simply because I had the tool in my hand. After the Bell Cord Couloir I was pretty tired, gaining this summit made me almost want to call it a day.
Loose Scree on the west side of the Bell Cord Couloir saddle.
We had to traverse this steep snow field from the saddle to start our ascent of Maroon Peak. The snow was very firm since it is out of the morning sun.
The beginning of the ascent involved very loose scree and hard snow.
The route up Maroon Peak
Me scrambling.
John getting to work, rock scrambling in crampons is a lot of work.
Me exhausted, stumbling to the top of Maroon peak. Maroon Ridge and North Maroon Peak, Phase3, sits in the background. I wasn't sure at this point I would have enough energy left over.
John on the Maroon Peak summit with Snowmass Mountain 14,092 Ft/4295 Meters in the Background.
Looking towards Crested Butte. Hometown shot for my mom.
Mt Crested Butte ski area.
John descending Maroon Peak.
On the way down I knocked this boulder loose. I yelled "rock! rock! rock!", this thing really picked up speed, John tried to jump over it, it skipped off a rock, went airborne and hit him in the knee while he jumped. In hindsight we were a little tired and simply were not taking the rock fall hazard seriously enough. You can bet that changed.
It took John a while to recover from the impact, we were not sure at this point whether he would continue but eventually shook it off. It did slow him down and I am sure caused a lot of discomfort.
Climbing back to the Bell Cord saddle.
No comments:
Post a Comment