Little Bear Peak

Route: West Ridge and Hourglass
Posted On: 11/8/2025, By: Wolfman_CO
Info: The whole area is basically summer conditions. Ascended via southwest ridge, descended Hourglass. Very minimal ice in hourglass and completely avoidable. Ridges completely dry, which I assume is also true for the traverse to Blanca. Very windy with strong gusts so opted not to do the traverse today 

Route: Little Bear + Blanca Traverse
Posted On: 10/20/2025, By: evanc
Info: Traverse is still in! See more details on my Blanca conditions update. 

Route: Lake Como Approach
Posted On: 10/3/2025, By: stealthiscamera
Info: Warm, dry and snow free all the way up to the summit. A little bit of water in the hourglass but easy to avoid. Only passed 4 hikers all day between 8ft on Lake Como rd and Little Bear summit. 

Route: West Ridge and Hourglass
Posted On: 10/3/2025, By: ash_tay
Info: Summer conditions- all the snow from 2 weeks ago has melted. Started at 5:30am (from 10k) and returned to car at 2:15pm. The aspens along Lake Como road are beautiful and at their prime.

The gully is very loose, but as others have said, sticking to the right side at least gives you more solid handholds. I would rate the difficulty of this gully somewhere between the gullies on Pyramid and Sunlight IMO.

My partner and I went back and forth on whether to go the hourglass or the ridge route. Ended up going hourglass and I'm glad we did. There was a fair amount of wind in the afternoon which would have been tough on the ridge. Due to the dry conditions and lack of people (only saw 3 others on LB) we felt hourglass was safest. There is a small trickle of water running down, but otherwise it is dry. We stayed middle/left side. The green rope is still there and appears to be in good condition. I did use it for a short section while descending. There is also a brand new orange rope up at the anchor that hasn't been used yet. Thank you to whoever put those up!

I would absolutely do the ridge though if it is a crowded day or if the hourglass is not dry. I really enjoyed LB as I felt I was well-prepared (50 other 14ers). This is a very tough mountain though and demands respect. Do not take it lightly. 

Route: West Ridge and Hourglass
Posted On: 10/3/2025, By: Lofty312
Info: Maybe my new favorite 14er! Was nervous a little in regards to hourglass conditions, but there hasn’t been any rain or snow on Little Bear in almost a few weeks. Hourglass almost completely dry besides maybe an inch wide of water tricking down the center which can easily be avoided. I really did not feel that this peak or route was the 2nd hardest standard 14er route in Colorado. It was much easier than I thought it would be in my head. Also was able to start close to 10k ft which helped a ton thanks to a friends Jeep. #49 in the books and 20th 14’er this summer to retire the season out! 

Route: Little Bear + Blanca Traverse
Posted On: 10/3/2025, By: porkypine
Info: Summer conditions as of 10/2 in entire Blanca area. Did the traverse w no issue. The route description is a a tad over the top in how difficult the route is. Def do your homework, but imo if you can hike lil bear, you can complete the traverse. Exposure aside it’s a cruise. Be safe and have fun! 

Route: West Ridge Indirect
Posted On: 9/16/2025, By: EvanKBlack
Info: We were able to climb on Monday, which avoided the terrible winds/graupel and ice remnants situation described by those who climbed Sunday. Basically all dry except for some annoying iciness on flatter rocks in the morning. This was pretty easy to avoid if you climbed with caution. We started at the positively luxurious hour of 6 to reduce the iciness. 'Tis the season to be extremely watchful of forecasts and conditions reports. WRI is a great alt to HG and should become the standard route. Routefinding if equipped with the GPX (download it!) and photos was pretty trivial IMO.

Decent both-sides airy exposure on ridge as well, had to quadruped climb across the narrowest section. Crux block is a little reach-y for sure for short people (I am 5'5"), but just take your time to find your holds. Having some other pairs of eyes to give you a spot on the downclimb helped tons (thanks to the new friends we linked up with!). Grossest and slowest bit for me, as always, was the descent of the loose crap. Very very easy to knock tons of rocks small and not so small down, so be very careful with a team. Monday was in fact the bluebird-est day I think I've seen all summer, so the temptation to attempt the traverse to Blanca was definitely felt. Oh well, maybe next time I decide to subject myself to the road! 

Route: West Ridge Indirect
Posted On: 9/15/2025, By: HighNoteMelody
Info: We camped at Lake Como the night before and started around 6:30 am. There was a lot of wind and little pellets of snow, but weirdly enough the tiny pellets didn't make climbing slippery. We passed two guys (that were on their way down) that went up the hour glass and came down west ridge. (Looks like the guys posted right before me in the post above with the photo--so glad ya'll made it down safely btw!) But they advised us not to go that route and I don't think anyone went the hour glass route. We heard that there was a group that tried, then bailed shortly after. I think everyone else we met went west ridge indirect. There was visibly snow on Blanca, and because it was so windy, no one bothered to do the traverse. 

Route: West Ridge and Hourglass
Posted On: 9/15/2025, By: ajtrezco
Info: My buddy and I were the ones that ascended the hourglass yesterday. Route is definitely out right now, there is no safe way to ascend, even with spikes. Stayed climbers left and it was still almost entirely a thin layer of ice on all the rocks; had some close calls going up. Picture shows the condition of the entire center of the gully. Rope is frozen under a few inches of ice. West Ridge Indirect was tons of fun, even with 60+ gusts on our early morning descent. 

Route: West Ridge Indirect
Posted On: 9/15/2025, By: enoki
Info: Graupel and ice on much of the route from gaining the ridge to the summit, although it didn't affect the climbing difficulty much. The gulley in pic #17 in the route description was iced up, but our party just worked up the rocks to climbers left and then crossed the gulley a bit higher where it seemed feasible.

Hourglass seemed to be extremely icy. One party ahead of us said they went up it and regretted the decision, coming down the west ridge instead. Another large party seemed to get turned around at the hourglass as well.

Also, for what it's worth: hit the crux with a large group and I think almost everyone ended up taking the "bypass" rather than climbing ridge direct. I am tall, and found the crux as described doable, but my shorter partner (who is a strong climber) said she thought my beta would've been very reachy, whereas the workaround felt very good to her. See Daway's excellent trip report for some pics of the workaround that don't make it into the route description.

Thanks to everyone who pioneered this route! LB felt much more doable to me with this development, so grateful for the work that the community has put in on this this year. 

Route: West Ridge Indirect
Posted On: 9/5/2025, By: ColoNativeGal
Info: Summer conditions as of Thursday. The day before it hailed and snowed a little according to the person we talked to heading out. 98% of that melted. There was some water running down some of the rocks and looked like there was a fair amount of water in the hourglass, based on the view from above. Really enjoyed this route, and very grateful to daway8, Bill and this community for putting up this route. Downloading it from the 14er app was also super helpful to reference the photos to ensure we were on track. Only 4 of us on the mtn, which was awesome. 2 groups of 2, but we ended up on the WRI at the same time. Cairns were also helpful. Check every hold, some rocks were loose, but the ones during the airy/exposed spots were super solid and I felt very comfortable. The crux didn't bother me either, in fact similar to another person's post I wasn't really aware it was the crux. The orange lichen and the gps coordinates is sort of what clued me after the fact. Coming down we did overshoot the WRI entry gully a little, we went too far climbers right, but we were able to navigate back down to the talus field where we started no problem. I recognized the spot where we took a break before we started up. Very important to take note of such things. The suck gully is one of the worst and was a little difficult to navigate in the dark. 

Route: West Ridge Indirect
Posted On: 8/26/2025, By: Kbrown321
Info: Ascended via WRI and descended Hourglass on 8/24. We took an ascent line up to the west ridge that was much closer to the hourglass than previous TRs mentioned and hit the ridge right before the crux, nothing harder than class 3 on the way up so seems mostly choose your own adventure from the talus field up to the ridge. Crux was as expected, certainly exposed and felt like 2 moves of 4th class. After doing the ledge traverse back to the HG route we cut back up to the west ridge which added a bit more fun and saved travel on loose rock. Overall liked the WRI a lot.

Hourglass descent was another story. A hailstorm the day before turned the thing into a waterslide and pretty much everything was wet. Very not fun.

Also that gully up from lake como absolutely sucks. One of my least favorite terrain features on any 14er.

Glad the WRI exists with good beta now to add a more fun and safer route to the top but dang this mountain still makes you work for it 

Route: Little Bear + Blanca Traverse
Posted On: 8/25/2025, By: dweiss
Info: Did the so-called "Grand Slam," hiking up to Lake Como, camping, then starting at 3:30am to Little Bear, traversing to Blanca, traversing to Ellingwood, then camped at Lake Como again, hiking down the next day.

While we were climbing, conditions were PERFECT. Only moisture present was a thin stream in the Hourglass that was easily avoidable. No snow present along any of the route. Practically no wind the entire way, was a blessing while we were doing the LB-B traverse. Once we got down to camp a crazy hailstorm came through at about 4pm and left a layer of snow on everywhere in the mountains and Lake Como, but it melted by the next day. I would expect these storms to get more frequent and snow buildup to start in earnest as we get later in the year. Highly recommend getting super early starts to beat the afternoon storms. 

Route: West Ridge Direct
Posted On: 8/22/2025, By: MattDLane1
Info: Everything seemed very dry, may change with some rainfall in the next few days. Excellent conditions right now with the right weather. Hourglass looked good, get after it early! If you have the necessary skills & beta to do West Ridge Indirect, it seemed preferable to rolling the dice in that nasty couloir. 

Route: Lake Como Approach
Posted On: 8/7/2025, By: ryans
Info: I took my 2001 stock Jeep Cherokee Sport (average tires) to around 10,200 which is the last major parking spot (could easily hold around 10 plus vehicles) before you get to Jaws 1 which is a quarter mile down the road (there is actually another spot right before Jaws 1 that will fit two vehicles perfectly as well). From the turnoff on the highway it took me 50 minutes to get there driving somewhat cautiously. From the parking spot at 10,200 it took our group around 1hour and 45minutes to arrive at Lake Como at a casual pace. My thoughts are if you can get to 8,800 feet, there is no reason why you can't make it to 10,200. Right after 8,800 feet there is a small stretch of a few hundred feet that takes a little bit more time to make it through but after that, I think the road is actually better than the lower part. One other item to note, there is great campsite just above Lake Como, once you get to the last cabin above Lake Como, there is a small trail to the left that leads to a nice open area that can easily fit three to four tents. From this spot, it is a short 5 minutes walk to the start of the gully.