Unclimbed Faces?

[Redleg Bruce]

Are there still quite a few unclimbed routes on many mountains in CO? If so, are they all technical or are there some that no one would bother to climb, like the NE face of Audubon, for instance, that is just an extremely steep scree/talus slope?

[JohnWilliams]

The West face of Longs Peak has just a few established routes on it. The ones i have seen are in Paul Nesbit's book Longs Peak. Its an old book, dont know if its still printed. the face is around 600 ft. I would love to have my name on some route up Longs, wouldn't you?

[GravityPilot]

There's at least 8 routes up the west face. I don't think that qualifies as a few, though an FA up Longs would be pretty cool. There's still new lines on the east face to be had, but be ready for hard free climbing and desperate aid climbing.
That being said, I believe there's still FAs and FDs out there, but it takes a lot to find them. It would be an insult to myself to publish the short list I've compiled after all the hard work I've put into it. And remember, they were hardcore back in the day, so never assume something is "probably too difficult" to have been climbed by some guy in studded leather boots.

[Scott P]

Dinosaur National Monument has several peaks which are still unclimbed. The peak you are looking at below appears to be unclimbed:



So, for a point of reference, how big is that face you are looking at? It's over 1.5 times taller than the Diamond on Longs, but the rock isn't good. Lest anyone thinks that the ridge to the right looks realitively "low angled", rest assured it simply connects to another even steeper peak and the ridge is overhung on both sides:



Here is the peak from another angle:



Here is a zoom shot of one of the other peaks, this one almost right on the UT/CO border:



Rather than being vertical, the summit block is actually severly overhanging on all sides.

It took us three years to finally find a route up this one:



Once we did find the route, it turned out be to "only" 5.4 making it the easiest peak in the area, but the routefinding through all the exposed ledges to put the route together was the most challenging part. It would be interesting to find another route up there, but I don't know if I want to dedicate another threree years to doing so. A much more competent climber could surely force several other routes up that thing in much less time. The sandstone is loose and dangerous, but climbable.

It's just that hardly no one goes out there. To quote from the mountain page on the peak above:

In all my years of exploration in the area, I have only run into people in Jones Hole and Harpers Corner. The rest of the area is very little known. I’ve found one cairn, no hikers, and no footprints in all my years of traveling here, even on holiday weekends. Over Labor Day weekend, there was neither a soul nor footprint to be found for miles and miles around.

We've been going out to the area for about 26 years now, but I still have yet to find a footprint (other than our own), even on easy terrain.

[Redleg Bruce]

Would it be safe to assume that the only remaining FAs are all technical? I imagine there have to be some hills out there that haven't been climbed on all sides, even just class 2 or 3 stuff. Any thoughts on that? And yes, it would be pretty sweet to have my name somewhere on Long's east face!

[nordberg]

There's Cottonwood Canyon above Sherman, west of Lake City, with a couple miles long wall of very nice granite (pre-Cambrian), doesn't owe Yosemite much, and there is one route (Black Sheep) that I know about on it. Plenty free camping all up the canyon. Don't know why it is not more known.
N.