Approach - Saturday, May 28th
With anticipation I kept opening my eyes open to peek at my watch – 5:45am – almost time for the alarm! I pulled my small fleece blanket a little higher on me and readjusted my head on the reclined drivers seat. I had made an 8hr trek from Salt Lake City, UT to Aspen, CO by myself in order to meet up with some other SPers from across the intermountain west to climb Capitol Peak, reportedly one of Colorado’s most difficult 14ers based on the class 4 rating of its knife-edge ridge. The current snow cover would probably make the route even more difficult.

I had first heard of this peak when climbing the East Ridge of Mt Russell with Joel Wilson. Having just come from Boulder, Colorado, he had told me how similar the two ridges were. When I saw Scott Patterson’s call for partners, I jumped at the chance to climb the peak. The message board thread had received a lot of interest, and ultimately, we had a posse composed of yours truly from Salt Lake City, UT, Scott Patterson from Craig, CO, Brad Snider from Aurora, CO, Casey McCoy from Albuquerque, NM, Joel Schenk from Minnesota, and Kevin Donovan from Fort Worth, TX – truly a diverse group from all over the intermountain west.

I had arrived in Aspen the night before and failed to make contact with Joel and Casey, with whom I had hoped to share a campsite, so I drove around for a while before wandering my way out to the trailhead and going to sleep ca. 3am. Someone else was already camping at the trailhead, and I assumed that the person in the tent must be someone from our group. Finally my watch alarm went off at 6am – time to get up and head into town to meet the others. But this mysterious tent wasn’t stirring, and I was curious as to who it could be. I went back to sleep, waiting for them to get up first.

Finally I saw some signs of life and walked over to check it out – it was Casey. Apparently he had the same idea I did for free camping. We admired the gorgeous view we had of Capitol Peak, far up the canyon, and headed down to Old Snowmass to meet the others.

Shortly after 7am we pulled up to Harleywood Café. We were the last to arrive, and after some brief introductions and breakfast, I offered to lead the others to the trailhead. Joel was riding a motorcycle and said he would head up before us, and then hitch a ride where the road got rough. After the convoy finally got moving, I noticed that Joel had been a bit slower to get out, and was actually bringing up the rear! After several horribly dusty miles we reached a pullout where he left his ride.

We headed out from the trailhead following the irrigation ditch approach variation. Granted its longer, but the other way lost 400 ft. Although it was shown as mostly a cross-country route in Gerry Roach’s “Colorado’s Fourteeners” guidebook, this way actually had a fairly distinct trail that took us high on the bench overlooking Capitol Creek. The pace of the group was slow and easy, as we had all day to reach camp at Capitol Lake. Still, my hyperactive urgings wouldn’t go away, and as soon as Kevin suggested I bring up the lead, I was off. I kept trying to slow down, and stopped often, but I was still often far ahead of the group. Finally, I began to feel guilty about my anti-social behavior, and insisted on following someone else for the remainder of the approach as a method of restraint.

Finally the trail dropped down to a meadow to rejoin the main trail. After a precarious but non-eventful log crossing over the overflowing stream, we continued on our way. At about 9,300 ft there was enough snow that we donned our snowshoes and picked our way through the open forest. By this time Brad was mostly leading, and as he hiked faster than everyone else, I ended up hiking ahead with him. Pulling out my pocket topo map for reference, I kept us along the edge of the tree line below Mt Daley to avoid any unnecessary elevation loss. Occasionally we had glimpses of the 13er above, and the craggy spires on its lower slopes made for some interesting scenery.

At one point we reached a large clearing that allowed us to see Capitol Pk and the craggy summits on the west side of the canyon – they were incredible! While we had suffered some rain and snow earlier, blue sky was coming out again, so while the others hiked ahead, Joel and I got out our cameras. One feature that got everyone’s attention was a massive cornice spanning the col between pt. 12,878 and another rise – from our distance the thing was just enormous! It must have been some quarter-mile long and over 40 feet thick.

As we neared the first main headwall, we crossed a huge avalanche debris field. The blocks of snow were so large that it was like scrambling over talus – the scene almost appearing like our party was crossing a miniature icefall. Beyond this was a steep 200 ft wall of snow that we had to climb. By the time I reached it Kevin and Casey were halfway up, but had stopped. Once I caught up to them I discovered that they had lost the lower part of a pole in the snow. After waiting a few minutes, I kick-stepped around them and finished breaking trail to the top.

The snow was steep, perhaps reaching 45^o near the top, and it was just solid enough that an ice axe would have been nice, but the distance was short and soon I was on top. After another break we continued across another picturesque clearing, up another easier headwall to the left of a rounded knoll, and soon we were at Capitol Lake. Scott picked out a spot to bivi out in the open on some bare boulders while the rest of us dug out our tent platforms. The ancient moraine holding back Capitol Lake provided a nice windbreak for the camp, while still allowing us a front-seat view of the massive north face of Capitol Peak as the sun set – truly one of the best campsites I’ve had in the mountains.

That night I realized that I hadn’t brought enough fuel, and my stove kicked out early. As the lake was still frozen over, this left us with a possible fuel shortage for melting enough water to comfortable stay here until Monday, so we began discussing heading out the next day after summitting.

Alpine Start - Sunday, May 29th
At 4am I was out of my bivi sack and rearing to get moving. Headlamps on, packs on, crampons on – we were ready to go. The temperatures had gotten below freezing the night before, so the snow was just hard enough for some quality cramponing.

The game plan was to head up the 900 ft east-facing slope above camp to the K2-Daley saddle, reaching it just at sunrise, ca. 5:30am. From there we would drop down toward Moon Lake and meet up with the Snowmass approach route, which would put us on to K2, a high point at the end of Capitol’s NE ridge, by circling around to the east. From there we would climb the NE ridge, and possibly set up a fixed line over the knife-edge if things looked too dicey with the snow cover.

As expected, the slope was nice and hard, and we made fast progress. I worked on my pacing, and managed to hike non-stop until the top (apart from a quick stop for a photo). There I found a nice windbreak in the rocks and enjoyed the sunrise as the others caught up, Casey about 5 minutes behind and the others another 15 minutes later.

From the saddle we could look up the class 4 approach variation, which heads up the north ridge of K2. I had wanted to climb up via this variation and then descend the easier one, but so far the others were dubious about taking a more difficult variation to the top. From the saddle it looked slower than the easier traverse, so off we went.

The snow was steep where we traversed around. While the normal route follows a trail down into the cirque before re-ascending, Scott didn't want to lose the elevation, so we were traversing high. I was concerned about this as we would be more likely to be cliffed out by following so close to the base of the cliffs composing K2’s north ridge. Also, the terrain was steeper, and traversing steep slopes is a pain. As I continued to break trail, the slope got steeper (perhaps around 35^o), and over the next rise I could see some rocks. From this distance I couldn’t tell if we could make it through them, but things didn’t look good.