Hallett Peak

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After our adventure on Mt. Elbert, Margo and I met up with my friend Jim as he was getting off of work on Thursday evening. After drinking hand crafted beers and munching burgers at the local pub with the trust funded retro hippies, we headed up the canyon to "Ice Station Zebra". We made plans for the next morning to head up to the Indian Peaks Wilderness for some alpine wandering. As we pulled up to the kiosk at the entrance to the wilderness we were stopped by one of the lackeys for Thousand Trails who informed us that our Golden Eagle pass wouldn't work in here. "They're in the Department of the Interior and this is the Department of Agriculture and you know how those bureaucracies get along!" He chuckled. Funny thing was they do honor the Golden Eagle Pass in the Maroon Bells Wilderness. Jim grudgingly paid the troll and we rolled into the parking lot. We put on our boots and headed up towards the divide. We spent the day hiking up through alpine basins and enjoying the scenery. Suddenly, in the mid afternoon Jim declared that we had better get home and get ready for the climb that he and I were going to do the next day. We were planning to head up to Rocky Mountain National Park and make an attempt on the mighty North Face of Hallet Peak.

Approaching the Continental Divide in the Indian Peaks Wilderness

On the way back to Jim's house, we stopped in Ward to see what you could really get at the Ward General Store. We were greeted by the clerk at the store who bore a striking resemblance to Frank Zappa. "You wanna buy some roasted peppers?" he asked as he held up a dripping plastic bag with some unrecognizable green slimy material inside. Figuring that anything which was sealed would be safe to consume, I purchased a bottle of gatorade. "Frank" also persuaded us to get a bag of pretzels that was pull dated a couple of years earlier.

We woke up at 12:30 the next morning and slipped out onto the Peak to Peak Highway toward Estes Park. We turned into Rocky National Park and drove up to the Bear Lake parking lot. We started up the trail in the dark and thrashed our way through the scrub fir as we passed the lakes that led up to the canyon under the North Face of Hallet Peak. It started getting light as we passed around the last lake. "We started too late dad!" exclaimed Jim.

We still managed to be the first party on the Culp - Bossier route and soon I was belaying Jim up the first pitch. As I was trying to figure out the delicate moves at the end of the first pitch, Jim called down to me,"Its 5 ten f**ker!" commenting about the perceived difficulty at 6AM.

The climbing was best described as incredible, steep and solid with all kinds of features which kept the climbing within the 5.8 range. After a steep face climbing pitch that ended on a tiny foot ledge with a semi -hanging belay, I turned the lead over to Jim. After an hour or so of worrying about running out of rope because I couldn't hear Jim, I heard the reassuring cries of "Off Belay!" I started up and the wall got steeper and steeper until I was faced with doing some extremely steep moves around detached flakes with another party below. My hopes for a comfortable belay ledge were dashed when I came up to Jim who was at a belay standing on the only holds available. We had gotten off route and were now on the Hesse - Ferguson route.

I made a rather pathetic attempt to reconnect with our intended route and then traversed in the other direction in an attempt to reach a seemingly comfortable ledge where I could set up a decent belay from where we could finish this climb. The blue skies had been replaced by the usual billowing afternoon clouds. Jim, who has done his share of alpine climbing in Colorado was becoming quite irritable as he pondered the inevitability of another afternoon thundershower. The decent ledge did not materialize as I stood on a meager sloping ledge and plugged as many pieces as I could into the crumbly crack, hoping for the best.

Jim led the next pitch masterfully through the overhanging section to yet another manky hanging belay just below the rim of the summit plateau. I came up to his belay and climbed the last run out 100 feet to the top. After congratulating each other on our success we began our trudge to the top of the descent gully. The air at 13,000 feet was quite thin to someone who has spent most of their life at sea level.

The scramble down the loose gully seemed to go on forever and as a last parting shot, we had to descend a steep snow slope in our tennis shoes using rocks for ice tools. We were feeling smug as we marched down the trail past the sorority girls who were so enraptured by the chipmunk who was mooching off of them.

As we drove back home from Estes Park the lightning flashed and the rain started falling. I couldn't help but think about the bald tires on Jim's Subaru, but we made it safely home. That night, the lightning flashed directly overhead and the rain pounded on the living room window. I was looking forward to sleeping in the next day.