| Peak: | Mt. Columbia |
| Route: | Southeast Ridge |
| Range: | Sawatch |
| Posted By: | the_hare |
| Date of Info: | 3/10/2024 |
| Date Posted: | 3/11/2024 |
| Condition Update |
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The foothills just beneath Columbia got less than 2in of snow but this part of the Sawatch looked completely plastered from 285. The road is packed down from snowmobile traffic, could park at the camping pull-offs a couple tenths of a mile from the 2WD parking at the national forest entrance. When I got to the CO Trail it looked like nobody had been up recently except for some moose a little higher up who made a sort of trench even continuing up the SE ridge. A party of people packed down the CO Trail to a nice bootpack while I was gone. The snow got a nice freeze/thaw cycle in after the recent storm so the sun-exposed snowfields on more southern aspects of the ridge were hard and sturdy in the morning. I sidehilled along the ridge to link up these snowfields that I ascended vertically. The lodge pole stand after 10,800ft had the most tedious snow, thick sticky powder. I aimed west for a S-facing exposed rib loaded with frozen drifts to more easily ascend to the rocky outcropping at 11,400 ft. I skirted the bumps ahead until treeline to the left/south since they had patchy and thin snow. I followed coyote and then a herd of elk tracks through the bumps above treeline, they knew some good shortcuts! Had to bring snowshoes all the way up to 13,100ft for one final ascent up a wind-affected snowy ridge. Ridge proper on the upper cirque has some wind-affected snow features that were sometimes supportive, sometimes not. For the most part I found sidehilling to the left fastest but sometimes ridge proper was better. Commanding views of Yale to the south all day. Little wind forecast and experienced, picked up after dark though.               
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