Mt. Columbia

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 6/2/2025, By: rmcpherson
Info: Started from the trailhead at 5:45 AM. No snow on route, or easily avoidable, until 13.5k feet. Around 13.6k feet the ridge steepens and there is consistent snow on the crest. We transitioned to microspikes and gaiters at this point and were able to ascend quickly on solid snow from there all the way to the summit. No more than 10-15 posthole steps on the entire route and snowshoes were not necessary. Summited at 10:45. No sign of any other people, either by our route or the standard route, on the ascent. We met two groups ascending the SE ridge on the descent. Back at the trailhead by 2:30 PM. Beautiful route (I prefer it to the scree slog of the standard route) as long as the snow is in. With soft snow, this would be difficult as above about 13.6k the snow would be hard to avoid without dropping to the SW/W side of the ridge on the last mile before the summit and this side becomes steeper near the summit. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 5/25/2025, By: Kcmartinez22
Info: Great day on Columbia's SE ridge! Snow free all the way to tree line, and then mostly avoidable snow to above13k. Consistent snow from where the standard joins the ridge to the summit. No special gear or snowshoes needed. Poles may have been nice but we had huskies in tow. I put spikes on to go down and they were not necessary. A little awkward getting around the class 2 rocks on the ridge. Some postholing, especially on the steep slope leading up to 13,200 where it was waist deep. We clocked it at 5500 ft gain and 13.3 miles. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 5/23/2025, By: butlerer
Info: This trip had everything you could hope from a spring 14er--incredible views, fun and challenging terrain, ski/skating down on spikes, blue skies and sunshine, post holing into a (shallow) stream, summit ridge wind gusts, and a great, quiet day on the mountain. Slopes were icy and wind blown in spots. Spikes were necessary, especially in the wind. Snow was expectedly soft on the way down and needed floatation for several miles. Opted out of the traverse as it looked too snowy/icy for my day. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 5/4/2025, By: kelseyycarol
Info: Perfect weather day for the southeast ridge! There were two moose, a mama and baby right on the trail, not even a half mile in. The trail was dry for the first mile and a half-ish then got a little patchy with snow. Tree-line and above was dry for the most part. Most of the snow was avoidable on the ridge, until right about where standard meets up, lots of snow still on the ridge to the summit. Didn’t need or use spikes or snowshoes all day. We saw 3 others out there today, who I believe all went up standard then we saw them go down the couloir on boards. 

Route: Southwest Couloir
Posted On: 4/29/2025, By: Omatt89
Info: Warning, the trail is covered in lots of snow most of the way. As, in 400 feet from the TH, the snow starts. It is mostly continuous the rest of the way. A couple dry patches. I would highly suggest going very early, or on a cloudy overcast day. The trail is pretty crazy right now. Definitely doable, mostly due to a solid boot pack leading the way, but you have to push it hard. I did not use traction or flotation on the way up or the way out. 70 percent chance of snow slowly rolled in and out around 11/12 and kept conditions firm so I could hike out. By 4 ish it looked like the storm really rolled in. Little wind. The couloir is pretty long and very steep at the top. The snow was crusty and fresh in places above 13000, around 11am conditions finally softened up a little in the middle of the couloir. A dirt patch to cross below the choke. Adventure skiing in the avy runout area. Adventure hiking in the woods. Lots of snow, go early and or fast and or on a overcast day. Or the snow will take at least a month to melt down. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 4/17/2025, By: sthoward2009
Info: Started hiking around 7 am and there is snow on the road so I couldn't drive to the trailhead but just added about 1/2 mile to the start of the hike. I got up to the base of Columbia without too much difficulty but the going was a little slow since its my first time on this trail. I was following a hiking track that wasn't always easy to see and missed the turn off to Columbia but circled back once the valley opened up above the treeline. Made it up to 12900 ft but turned around because it got super windy and I hit my turnaround time. Later it did get overcast and more windy and dropped some graupel and fortunately I was already down in the valley below the treeline. I postholed a lot on the hike back down. I thought snowshoes would make more of difference and they did in the morning but afternoon temps got too high for them to be effective. 

Route: Harvard and Columbia Traverse
Posted On: 3/10/2025, By: tothestars
Info: Successful summit of Mt. Columbia for the first time. Adam and I began the climb from where Colorado Trail crosses North Cottonwood Road and took the off-trail Columbia/Harvard Traverse. We were hoping to hit both peaks. We did not anticipate how long Columbia would take and turned around after Columbia summit and a down climb to check out the descent/climb to Harvard. We decided to not go to Harvard as we did not bring enough water or food and the 2.4mile-ish (one way) descent and climb there looked...challenging. After you leave the Colorado trail, the route bushwhacks up, over and around many snow humps and fields and is slow going both on the ascent and the descent. Route finding back down was slower than we expected due to the mixed and variable snow/rock/bushwhacking. Beautiful views of Yale the entire way up. We could've managed without snow shoes the whole way but they were helpful on some short sections where you're climbing soft sink-y snow humps. Unfortunately it's so mixed between dry/rock and snow that it may just be better to not use them. Crampons were helpful on descent from the top of the peak to the dry rides before the treeline AND through trees as we decided not to use snowshoes but definitely postholed from time to time unexpectedly up to our waists. All in all with an hour at the summit and some down climbing to check out the route to Harvard from the top of Columbia, the day took 12 hours, with 8hr moving time- that's just up and back to Columbia. As this site says, the route is definitely long... seems much longer than the mileage or elevation gain would indicate. Going to try to go back to hit Columbia and Harvard this week in one go if the weather holds up. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 2/23/2025, By: masonzastrow
Info: Successful summit! Four of us were on the mountain today, but I think the other two turned around because one of them didn't have snowshoes. Between us four, we put in a good trench to treeline. Despite forecasted winds of ~10 mph, winds over the east-west portion of the ridge were downright nasty. Be prepared with a face covering, even if the forecast is favorable! There was a moose right off the Colorado trail portion and a big group of rams up near the ridge at about 13,200. Cached snowshoes at 11'900 I think, definitely the right move. 

Route: From Frenchman Creek
Posted On: 2/18/2025, By: GreatGlissader
Info: Was going for Harvard, but trail-breaking made things take longer than planned, so went up Columbia instead. Trail was broken up to somewhere past 11k, then it was mid thigh deep snow for a while. Went up the south side of the basin to try and get out of the snow and onto more bare areas. Things got a little better around 12.2k. Made it to the base of Harvard east face, but time was going by, so we saw a ridge that went up to Columbia and took that. It worked. Probably less windy than the SE ridge. If you see a husky, that might be Basqy. He followed us 3.5mi to camp, then we texted the owner with inreach and had to walk him back a few miles to meet the owner. So be aware if you see him he might tag along the rest of the day, but he's a good dog. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 1/27/2025, By: bigfoot1
Info: Third time's the charm! Successful summit finally. I've got a cold or something and my lymph nodes are the size of golf balls so I decided to do an easier hike today. I was expecting my old trench to still at least be visible... but it was not. So I got to break out the ridge again. Tons of moose and deer/elk poop. Snow was all unconsolidated faceted tiny little marbles, and probably over 10.5k ft, it was regularly coming up to my knee and mid thigh. Had to kick in steps 3 times on each foot and was still sliding back down on every step and I started like punching the snow with my hands to get more of it out of the way. Needless to say, this was a very slow going process. I didn't keep track of when I took my snowshoes on/off, but above treeline is generally pretty bare but I carried my snowshoes with me all day so I could put them on and take them off as needed. The southwest ridge was pretty dry so I figured I would take the summer route down to save some time and run out. Shouldn't take longer than 2 hours to get back to the car from Columbia... right? Biggest mistake I have ever made in my life. Ridge is dry going down until about 12.8k ft and then I decided to pick my own adventure and veer off the summer route and got rocks in my shoes. Around 12k ft, I cut almost over to the southwest couloir and followed that down and out. The snow slabs are all really stable. Because I didn't take the real way down, I had some trouble finding the trail and just kind of bushwacked back to basin trail. The snow down low here is really really really deep (chest level in some places but I am kinda bad at picking good lines) and there are spruce traps and tons of hidden downed trees that my snowshoes would catch on. Unless you want to be miserable, don't follow my tracks. I also figured because back in November, the basin trail was pretty popular, so it would obviously be broken out. It was not. There has been NO ONE on that trail in probably over a month, so I got to break that out as well. I was pretty cranky because my easy day had turned into a misery slog so the tracks aren't super nice. Definitely not even close to trenched. At some point, a moose helped break out some of the trail for me which was nice. Solid hard trench on this trail (starting from the parking area at the end of the road) ends around ~10k ft, so not very far. I saw the moose on my road walk out, but wasn't fast enough to grab a picture. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 12/23/2024, By: AndrewJCraigie
Info: Fun day with @astranko! Sections of deep loose snow between the Colorado trail split and the ridgeline made snowshoes handy to have, but annoying take on and off as we crossed dry sections. Carried spikes but never put them on as overall trail didn't have too much snow and it was warm. Minimal snow on the ridgeline. Was able to make it to the proper trailhead w/ my Subaru outback with four season tires pretty easily. Some snow and ice along the way could be difficult for some cars. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 11/23/2024, By: bigfoot1
Info: I didn't use traction at all today, and trail is 95% bare until the second switchback. A lot of the snow has melted in the past 2 weeks. After that, it is patchy, especially along the boot trench. Still pretty easy to follow, and only a 3 or 4 10m sections have had snow drift back over it. The snow that is still there is a mix between granular faceted snow (that is really trying to melt), and powder under ~1cm of crust. The mud is a little bit slippery if you are running down the ridge, ok if you are walking. At near treeline, still a lot of wind drifted snow. Only heard suspicious hollow snow when following the old trench, and there was some small bit of cracking. Definitely wasn't steep enough to worry about any large slabs cracking off. There is no cracking if you leave the drifted trench areas. Above treeline, snow looks to be completely avoidable and the ridge is more or less clear. Ok so now, I'm going to admit to being a flatlander who has never hiked in colorado in the winter before, and I know I sound absolutely insane, but I swear on my life the wind at the ridge today was SW at 30-40mph sustained with gusts up to 70mph. I know the NWS has the winds on Columbia 20mph west sustained with gusts up to 38mph. I was able to lean fully into the wind and not fall. I had to walk angled into the winds to make any significant forward progress, and was almost forced off my feet every couple of seconds. I stuck closer to the NE side of the ridge, trying to be somewhat shielded by the wind, which maybe 15% worked, but it just got worse the higher I went. I ended up turning around at the first mini peak at 12.7k ft because it was becoming difficult to see with the wind drying my eyeballs out from under my sunglasses and also from having tiny pieces of ice/snow hurled at my face. There was also absolutely nothing in the way to shield from the wind. It would have been ok to slowly truck on if I had brought my ski goggles, but I didn't think they were necessary on a sunny, 35 degree day with a forecast of mild wind. At least I got further than last time. There has got to be some weird wind tunnel effect or something to make the winds so aggressive along that ridgeline. I've been above treeline in 60mph sustained, 80mph gusts before.. so I really don't think I'm being that much of a drama queen about the wind today, but maybe the winds feel less overpowering in the appalchians?? I stuck my head out the car window at 60mph on the way home and the ridge gusts felt faster. On my way out, met another hiker who was going to head partway up the ridge and 2 others heading to Harvard Lakes. Seems like the trail to the lakes is also pretty trenched out and popular and I doubt you'd need any traction. It will probably be a few snowstorms until I want to return here to finally get the summit. I wasn't able to see how much snow coverage there was on the standard route, and it is probably 50/50 on whether it is snow loaded or dry. If you want an easy shoulder season summit of Columbia via the standard route before full winter comes, you might as well try tomorrow. I would not recommend this ridge route tomorrow unless you bring a parachute; NWS is calling for sustained 25-35mph SW wind with gusts up to 50 mph. 

Route: Southeast Ridge
Posted On: 11/11/2024, By: bigfoot1
Info: Patchy at the beginning switchbacks. Broke out a boot path up to the treeline at 12.2k ft, and there should be a pretty good trench now to follow. Don't recommend spikes, snow gets too sticky and balls up as the day goes on. Snowshoes would have been smart in the trees, but not sure how much they will help along the ridgeline. Some small patches of snow were shearing off, but was still pretty stable. I will be back again soon to actually summit columbia via this route. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 10/26/2024, By: bfaulkne
Info: Snowy/icy sections the entire way. I brought microspikes and did not use them. You may run into a trapdoor or two on the final ridge to the summit, but nothing consequential. 

Route: West Slopes
Posted On: 9/30/2024, By: etradio1
Info: Mostly dry. Spikes not needed.