2009-06-27 Pacific Peak Climb

Pacific Peak has been on the radar for a while, it’s a ‘centennial’ peak, one of the highest 100 peaks in Colorado and it’s really a beautiful peak.

We left town Friday evening after work and camped at the Spruce Creek Trailhead just south of Breckenridge on Hwy 9. The whole way out the clouds were looming dark on the horizon and we were hoping that the forecasted 20% chance of rain would just up and 20% somewhere else! This was not to be and it was raining quite steadily as we pulled into the trailhead, an hour behind schedule, and well in the dark. Charles showed up as we were getting the tent set up and Jared and Jen were planning on meeting us early in the morning.

After an extremely brief sleep we were up at 3:30am getting the last of our gear ready in the lingering rain. The plan was to attempt the N Colouir on Pacific, a gorgeous line that works up past a spire and then dog-legs to the climbers-left before topping out just below the summit of Pacific Peak. With all the rain Friday night it was unlikely to have frozen and we were a little concerned about snow stability. Jen and Jared rolled in around 3:45am and we set off down the trail at 4am.

Normally such an early start isn’t required for colouirs but since this one is N facing it tends to get a lot of sun. Some previous trip reports also showed a huge cornice hanging dangerously above the top of the colouir and we wanted to be well off the route before the sun softened the snow too badly.

The approach was decent, a well built trail and mostly easy to follow. Coming down in the afternoon we would realize that our morning had us quite off trail but no matter we made good time and before long the sun was coming up.

First sign of light

Looking back down our trail at the sunrise

On the approach (photo by Charles)

Dawn was swift and we had great hopes that the morning sun would burn off the hazy clouds that were obscuring our route.

Our route is slightly right of middle…

This was not to be and our objective was completely obscured in low-hanging clouds. We decided to wait and see if it would clear.

Charles and Jared

It did not…. not at all in fact.

Our planned route is just to the Left of the spire (middle-right of the image)

Another section of the ridge

Since we couldn’t see what shape the route was in and had no idea what the cornice at the top looked like we decided to play it safe and skip the N colouir this time around. Rather, we picked out a line we could see and decided to climb that, since we couldn’t go home without climbing something! Jared and Jen decided to turn around, he had just flown in from the E coast the night before and hadn’t gotten much sleep and since we were abandoning the main objective it seemed like the sensible thing to do.

Jared and Jen

It’s official, Charles is cooler than me!

Me starting up the colouir (photo by Charles)

Charles, Jamie, and I got ourselves geared up and started the assault on what we termed “Consolation Colouir” (c: The climbing was easy and Charles motored up the thing as if it were an escalator leaving Jamie and I huffing and puffing in his tracks.

Climbing in Consolation Colouir (photo by Charles)

Nearing the top (photo by Charles)

Me topping out (photo by Charles)

The climb was over really quickly and we topped out in the clouds, but a quick check of the GPS showed the summit was only 200 vertical feet  or so away. We stowed the crampons and axes and started grinding up the talus slope.

Talus grinding, joy of joys! (photo by Charles)

We summited at 9:00 and it was admittedly anti-climactic, here was our first views:

Summit view… I kid you not

Again, we decided to wait to see if it would clear off.

Summit shot (photo by Charles’ timer)

(photo by Charles)

And we were handsomely rewarded for our patience! Within 10 minutes the clouds had rolled back and we could see the whole valley laid out before us! It was absolutely amazing.

Clear summit views

Looking across the valley

Jamie admires the view

The trek down turned into a bit of an adventure as well. Our original plan was to drop down the talus slope and across a bit of a meadow and then glissade down a snow slope we had spotted on the way in.

Looking back up Pacific

Descending Pacific (photo by Charles)

Well, the first part of the plan went great, we decended the talus, hiked across the tundra-meadow and then got onto the snowfield.Wow was it a lot steeper from the top than from the bottom! Glissading was out, the runout was a partially frozen lake and plunge stepping didn’t feel safe at all. There was a layer of slush on top of a frozen crust and the whole thing generally felt sketchy. At one point I actually set off a small wet-slab avalanche and this was all the coaxing we needed to find another way down.

This “other way down” turned out to be not too glorious either! We decended a really loose scree gully and then on to another, shallower, snow slope which we step-kicked all the way down to the lake.

Charles arriving at the bottom of the 2nd snowfield

Looking up the original snow field with the small avalanche to the right of the rocky section on the left of the image

Looking back at Pacific and the whole basin

From the lake it was an easy trek out along the pathway and back to the cars.

Jamie and Charles heading down the path
Elevation Gain: 2.800 ft

Round Trip distance: 7.5mi