(Apologies for the lateness of this report relative to when I climbed the peak; I usually try and type these up 1-2 days after my return to Denver in hopes of better ability to remember and report important info, but I do have an admittedly flimsy excuse that will become clear later on...)

My last fourteeners before driving out to the East Coast for a Labor Day Weekend film festival and meeting with a filmmaking connection from a prior festival were Kit Carson and Challenger. The latter’s gully scarred me in oh so many ways, and so thoroughly that I would not have been displeased to return to the Centennial State and find that an early September blizzard had dumped enough snow to effectively call off the rest of summer 14er season.

Or so I told myself. In reality, I spent much of my travels itching to get home before Colorado’s climate could do its usual fall-skipping thing in the high country, because while I was not unwilling to slog up the Sawatches’ Class 2s once they had a light dusting of snow on them, my still-tentative levels of comfort with Class 3 terrain meant (and mean!) that I will only tackle it on a sunny, dry day.

Friday, September 13th promised exactly that for Sneffels, which was good, because Curtis and I had both agreed at the trailhead that we had been sufficiently traumatized by both Challenger’s gully as well as our descents of Lindsey’s and so wanted to do Sneffels’ sustained Class 3 SW Ridge coming and going.

Curtis immediately took off in the direction of the upper trailhead, though he reassured me that he liked my pace just fine, as it was gentle enough that he’d avoid tiring himself out before his planned Wetterhorn attempt the next day. ”Good,” I managed to wheeze between the desperate gasps of lungs that were trying to adjust to going from 14’ to 14,000’ in less than a week.

The trail’s pitch eased after we passed the upper lot, occupied at that time by only a single Tacoma whose driver clearly didn't possess an amygdala, and on the short stretch before Blue Lakes Pass, we picked up a group of brand-new-to-C3 hikers who would subsequently bail on following us up the ridge (and just as well - for reasons that will be made explicit soon, I would not recommend this route for a first Class 3) as well as Jack, an Iowa native and recent college graduate who was brand new to fourteeners. We blithely convinced him that it would be much more fun to come us rather than descend the pass - he had camped at Blue Lakes the night before - and enter the gully that seemed to sneer at all who passed within its sightline.

It looked almost innocuous from above, however.

The first section of ridgeline-adjacent scrambling was steep with a few loose-ish portions, though most likely nothing compared to that gully, and I was pleased with how intuitive route-finding was. We passed through the notch serving as a gateway to the downclimb in good spirits, and my faster buddies quickly left me in the dust covering this steep, slide-y section.

But this, it turned out, was just as well. I was still taking my sweet time picking my way up and over the rocks that the cairns led me to believe were a far more efficient path to the next gully over when I heard a thunderous crash and a frantic bellow of "ROCK!!!!!!" followed by what sounded like the 85% of the mountain rolling and tumbling down the very gully to which I was straggling.

Most likely the clamor only lasted thirty seconds, but it seemed like ten minutes had gone by before I felt I could exhale and yell over a profanity-prefaced, "Everybody okay?!" Curtis then shouted back, "Yeah, I think so." As he sounded way less than 100% confident in that assertion, I put a move on it as much as I was able to and scrambled my way over to the crux-bearing gully.

I seem to recall that Jack was still lying prostrate shortly below the crux, wind clearly knocked out of his sails. I mostly stayed out of the way as he slowly got back to his feet and got the story on what had happened: once Curtis had reached the top of the crux, Jack had attempted to follow him. Unfortunately, he'd put most of his weight on a boulder that had looked a lot more rooted than it actually was, and it had hit his leg, torquing his foot and ankle as it hurtled past him. From the sounds of things, he'd gotten off pretty lightly, but it was no surprise that he was wincing as he tried to put weight on the injured foot.

I hung back with him while Curtis continued on to do some route-scouting and also to make sure we were as clear of small projectiles hurtling in from above if/when we decided to go up and on. Despite the shock and pain, Jack was thinking about going on - it only hurt when his weight was on the side of his foot, he insisted - and while I had reservations about encouraging an injured first-timer to keep a stiff upper lip, even I had to acknowledge that it would've been hypocritical of me to make any sort of definitive statement on those lines, considering I've gone on to summit on plenty of occasions when it would have suited me far better to turn around.

Hopefully the stunning scenery above Blue Lakes numbed some of the pain from his eventual descent.

He elected to keep going on for as long as he could handle it, and he further elected to let me be the guinea pig for navigating the crux now that Curtis was solidly uphill from us. I first tried using a series of small cracks on climbers' right as holds; my right foot quickly slipped off a protrusion that wasn't enough for the worn-down nature of my hiking boots, and the jolt was enough to rip my fingers from their purchase and send me flying three feet down and back...and onto Jack. Jack's injured foot, to be precise.

I alternated between profuse f-bombs, apologies, and "Are you all right?!?"s as I steadied myself, made sure the only blow I'd taken was to my ego, and reassessed. Most likely climbers who didn’t totally suck at climbing could've made something with the path I'd just tried; I would clearly need to figure out another option. The rocks across the gully from me - on climber's left - also looked steep, but they looked nubby enough to offer decent handholds. I picked my way over and started up, grimly satisfied when the pitch eased and I could see Curtis not too far above.

Jack had his chance at inadvertent revenge on the next pitch up. I'd offered to let him go ahead; injury, first time fourteener-er, blah blah blah...he was still faster than I was. I waited below while he took the most obvious option to get up, my hand waiting on the rock I planned to use as a hold once I was clear to do so, staring vacantly in the direction of a summit I still couldn't see yet and wondering why, unlike most of the other early- to mid-thirtysomethings I knew, I couldn't be content with dreams of career advancement and family-having and -raising; nooooo, I could settle for nothing less than a series of physical challenges that very few people besides me would understand or care about and which would leave me regularly sucking wind at best and kill me at worst!...when I heard a soft exclamation of, "Rock!" from above. I was too lost in my self-mocking reverie to pull my hand back before the foretold missile in question clattered down from beneath Jack's feet, exhibiting what seemed to me a sadistic delight in mashing the middle finger of my left hand before it continued bounding merrily down to the crux wall below.

I have also made it a goal to ski Telluride someday, which seems comparatively reasonable.

The rest of the way to the final pitch thankfully proceeded without further incident, though my own injury quickly proved to be a disproportionate source of aggravation; in proof that my mama was right and I really *am* special, I'm among the 10% of humanity's lefties, and having my preferred grabbing and pulling hand suddenly compromised in terrain where I needed to do a lot of grabbing and pulling was not ideal.

Nevertheless, I didn't think much about the steep rock separating me from the summit and perhaps wouldn't have thought about it at all until just below the ridgeline marking the last 50' or so from success, when Jack got sketched out by what I can only guess was some combination of the pitch and the somewhat miserly nature of the holds I was using (though they were far more forgiving, I thought, than those on climber's right of that crux wall!). He shook his head as I got to a decent resting spot and declared that it looked like too much for him, under the circumstances. While it would have taken nothing less than the advent of the Apocalypse to make me turn around from where we'd been (and despite Curtis, who'd been watching our progress from a summit he'd long since shimmied up, frantically insisting that it wasn't that far, really!), I completely understood where he was coming from. After he confirmed that he felt pretty good about his ability to get down from where he was, I wished him well and silently wondered if he was about to spread word to Iowa about Coloradans being stupid, crazy, or both.

Curtis and I took our time on the summit; there was no weather to be seen, and like its fellow high-statured San Juans, Sneffels has some stunning landscapes surrounding it! Eventually, though, we would have to make our way down. The altitude must've suppressed our mutual too-recent memories of both Lindsey and Challenger, because we seriously considered descending the infamous gully; eventually, our mutual too-recent memories as well as a desire to make sure Jack had someone around for backup in case he got stuck somewhere sent us back down along the ridgeline.

After the fawning comment my shirtless pic got on my Kit Carson/Challenger report, I knew I had to play up this one to the fullest. ;)

The rock face below the summit did seem significantly steeper and more exposed on the way down than it had going up, but after a few backtracks and roundabouts to circumnavigate a few small gullies whose looks gave me the pukes, I met a very patient Curtis back at Kissing Camels. All too soon after, I found myself staring in despair at Curtis, seated safely atop the rock wall I'd been scrambling when that morning's boulder had unleashed its fury on Jack, then in even more despair down the crux as Curtis explained to me what he'd done: started down climber's left, where I'd been that morning, crossed the gully to climber's right, where I'd fallen onto Jack.

I mumbled a repetition of what he'd just told me, trying to tamp down the panic that threatened to turn into tunnel vision as I gaped down the drop-off to the gully floor below. It wasn't that far, really; 6-8', at best. Plus, the few remaining bits of my rational side reminded me, I'd come up it scant hours before and hadn't found my ascent route to be noteworthy in any major way, other than being better than my first attempt of the sleeker stone across the gully. Surely, if I just recollected and reversed what I'd done then, I stood a chance of beating my Friday the Thirteenth odds of having my obituary bleat about my demise at the whims of a mountain named after a long-lost Muppet!

Spoiler alert: I didn't die, and while this angle's not great for showing off my line (which is just to the left of the overhanging boulder that looks like an opening into the Ninth Circle of Hell), you might be sympathetic as to why I felt as if I was in a precarious situation going down.

My first step was, I decided, to ditch my backpack, a move I'd elected to take when I'd been facing the business end of Longs' Chockstone a few years before. What somehow failed to occur to me on Sneffels was that the base of the Chockstone is a lone flat respite in an infernal vortex of steepness; I was as mortified as I was grateful that no one was down below when my pack hit the gully floor and kept sliding to ever so slightly downhill of where Curtis was sitting.

The embarrassment did, at least, cut a bit deeper into the panic, and now unencumbered, I was able to look down from my perch. The foothold below me didn't look super prominent from my angle, but it was there, and it looked like it was reachable even for my short legs. I clutched the edge of the rock I was sitting on, pressed my abdomen into the smooth wall beneath it, and extended my foot, which quickly - and easily - found purchase. Another stretch to the next protrusion below and to my left, and then it was a hop and skip into the gully.

Curtis was kind enough to wait until my still-quavering hands fumbled at the buckles on my retrieved pack to tell me that the crux wall I'd just descended was just as bad as anything he'd seen when he'd done Capitol and Little Bear. I am not sure yet how to feel about that assessment; on the one hand, since I survived the crux, then maybe I can achieve my dreams of finishing Colorado's fourteeners after all! On the other hand, I am probably going to have to find a new therapist and potentially a prescription for anti-anxiety medication for that to be a realistic goal.

In another bit of unexpected Friday the Thirteenth good luck, my hat, which had tried to escape from my backpack when I'd made the idiotic decision to toss it down the crux wall, skidded to a halt just below where Curtis had been watching me, and he was kind enough to retrieve it for me.

The rest of the route back to Blue Lakes Pass was slow-going for someone with a terrible sense of balance and no trekking poles, which I'd elected to leave in the car for a route that had such a small trail-to-scramble ratio, but it wasn't anything I couldn't handle, and my guilt had been assuaged some after Curtis told me he'd seen Jack reach the pass safely. My own descent to the pass offered me plenty of opportunities to photograph my purple, swollen, unbendable middle finger with Sneffels' ridge as its backdrop in what is only an injury photoshoot and totally not me flipping the mountain the bird, I swear! Below that, I enjoyed my stroll in the abundant sunshine, happily accepted a Jeep-driving couple's offer of some ice-cold waters they'd stored in a cooler in their trunk, and amused myself taking video of the outhouse and speculating as to why its only lock is on the outside.

At least I have a new source of horror screenwriting material somewhere in this...

Then I got in my car and returned to Denver, cursing much of the way as I realized that, in addition to flipping off fourteeners, my favorite finger was also my go-to for manipulating my car's turn signal. Typing, I knew, would also be a literal pain; even if you're not a writer, like I am, everyone who uses a keyboard eventually needs the D. Most of my non-essential scribing endeavors - such as, say, trip reports - were going to be reclassed as low priority until I'd regained some flexibility in my damaged digit.

But even if you don't incur an annoying injury (that was entirely my own fault for not pulling my head out of my rectum in time, let me be clear!), I can't say as I'd recommend the SW Ridge as a first Class 3 fourteener route. Sure, Jack's misfortune was, indeed, mostly a matter of bad luck, but I suspect Curtis and I were able to avoid similar traps just by virtue of having tried and tested seemingly-solid-but-ultimately-not-holds on similar terrain in the past, and perhaps it seemed so second-nature to us to do those tests that we didn't bother explaining the technique to the poor sod we'd talked into coming up with us on the grounds that we were totally gonna have a better time on the ridge, dude! I have no doubt that the gully blows chunks, but I'd be willing to bet that it's a less dicey proposition overall for those new to going off-trail at high elevations.

Jack, I hope you're back safe in Iowa and that you come out to Colorado again. Hit me up, if you're so inclined, and I promise I'll take you up something way more boring next time.