Pyramid Peak
September 15, 2001 - Northeast Ridge
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Could you possibly miss this cut off to Pyramid in the dark? |
Gary and I were looking at the onset of hunting season for him and another long semester of law school for me, neither of which is supportive of an active climbing schedule. We were determined to score another challenging peak and headed for Aspen to attempt Pyramid. Camping was sparse but we found a site that we could occupy for one night before we would have to move on in favor of the group who held a later reservation. The description of Pyramid indicated that we would have an eight-hour day ahead of us but we still planned an early start to avoid any afternoon storms, though none were predicted
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The route to the bowl, right up the center . . . after we found the trail. |
Neither of us had been up the Pyramid trail proper but we “knew” where the cut off was and headed out in the dark. Of course, we missed the cut off and went about 100 yards too far before deciding to cut back toward the peak, planning to intersect the trail with a traverse across the slope above. When one looks at the ascent up to the valley below the north face of Pyramid, it is obvious where the trail has to climb to get there. We traversed and hit the trail quite high up on the slope and found on our descent that we had paralleled the formal route for much of our initial climb.
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The Northeast Ridge route from the saddle |
The valley below Pyramid is a bowl filled with glacial till and as you approach the head of the valley, you come across a crater like depression, which demonstrates that the valley is an ice filled bowl with a covering of stone. We circled around the depression and followed the eastern bank of the moraine to the trail which switchbacks up to the saddle at the base of Pyramid’s northeastern ridge. Pyramid Peak is renowned for difficult route finding and exposure, a reputation well deserved. The initial portion of the climb was well cairned and we soon came to the ledges portion of the route. The ledges sound ominous but the exposure only about 15 feet and we had passed this point only to look back minutes later to realize that “those were the ledges”. The next challenge is the green colored stone band where the trail crosses through a steep couloir and then wraps up through the green rock to a series of ledges above. From this point, the route was much less well marked and the exposure increased substantially. The key waypoints mentioned in guidebooks are clearly seen above, but one must pick the correct route, not always to minimize the climbing difficulty but more to lessen the exposure in case of mishap. The climb can be made with no more than class 4 difficulty if the correct route is always selected but pulling that off will be a challenge. We ended up in some lower class 5 territory and upon weighing the 1000-foot exposure; we backed off and reassessed the route.
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Howard and Gary atop Pyramid, Capital and Snowmass in the background |
After reaching an obvious skyline cleft the route shifts to an upward trending ledge system which places the climber on the summit of Pyramid. The view from Pyramid includes the Bells and at a much further distance, Capital and Snowmass. We ate lunch and headed down, finding that the correct route up is much more clearly visible on the descent. We picked our way down the ledges and onward to the base of the northeast ridge. Another rest and then down into the bowl below the north face and finally to the official trail that we had missed that morning. In hindsight, our morning route was a bit on the long side but surely, an easier climb than the deep gouge we descended. Nevertheless, our route finding bust had cost almost two hours and brought the total climb to about ten hours. Pyramid proved to be a tough climb but with proper route finding, the exposure and difficulty can be managed but not eliminated.