Little Bear Peak Trip Report 04/13/2014

Report Type	Full
Peak(s)	Little Bear Peak - 14,041 feet
Date Posted	04/13/2014
Modified	04/07/2015
Date Climbed	04/13/2014
Author	jmanner
Additional Members	guangxiren, Somewhat of a Prick, Mountain Trash

Little Bear Peak or How I learned to stopped worrying and love the Lake Como road
Vertical gained: ~4,237 feet Mileage: ~7.5 miles Sorry I left my GPS off. In March Bean put up a trip report of his successful ski descent of Little Bear, I had been waiting all winter for a report from LB. I had not included LB in my pre-baby plans last spring and I had regretted it ever since. So, when I saw that Little Bear was in for a good spring climb, I decided that I'd see if I could get group together to give it a go. This was particularly acute since this winter was a real bust. A winter where I had to turn back twice on days when the weather was perfect and so was my conditioning. I was ready to succeed on a summit attempt and Mount Oxford or Antero was not going to be sufficient. With that in mind I talked my climbing partner, Adam (Beard of Justice), into give a Little Bear a try, perhaps even get a ski descent in. I figured that it might be nice to get a whole crew together from the site so I put a forum post up. After a weather delay and few cancellations we were left with a "team" of four: Somewhat of a Prick (not just a clever name)-Nick, Beard of Justice, guangxiren-Z and myself. We meet at my house in Denver at 11 am on 4/12/2014 and drove down to the Lake Como road in two cars. Nick wisely chose to ditch his Xterra at the parking spoke at 8,800 at around 3 pm. Little bear and hourglass/west face So, Z and Nick crammed their stuff and themselves with Adam and me and we started crawling up the road. The crew had to jump out on at least ten occasions to help me get over some sketch sections. Finally, at around 4:15 PM we parked at Jaws .5, but not before Somewhat of a Prick tried to talk me to into continuing on... 'No, thank you.' Nice parking... At this point it was decided that Adam would leave his AT (and his only means for flotation)set up at the car and we'd take our two tents with us just in case some jerk-face had taken our god given right to Hotel Como(which I am pretty sure Z thought was a real hotel with a toilet.) The first few miles were interesting with Adam and I arguing about whom had made the correct decision: me lugging skis on my shoulder or Adam free from the extra weight of touring boots and skis. Around Jaws 1 the snow arrived and had zero support to it. So, I threw my ski crap on and started skinning, while laughing at Adam's utter stupidity. "Sure you don't want to drop you pack and go get your stuff?" "No!" "Ok, then it's your funeral." Except the joke was on me! The snow was not continues, which meant I had to spend most of my time hiking in my AT boots (which are not comfortable) and when I could skin, my rhythm was crap and I couldn't get into it. Type 3 fun At some point in my endless transition between "hiking" and "skinning" I ran into Bergstiegen(with Aerodan), fresh off a successful ski descent of Blanca and Ellingwood. Now deep down, I thought it was pretty awesome she was done with the Lake Como road forever(!!), however I had no energy to give my usual "That's awesome!!" response. I think all I could muster was "ok, cool..." Anyway, back on track on with the story. Not long after this we found continues snow and I was able to catch up and pass the chumps with the snowshoes and I found to my great delight that the hotel had a vacancy! I had to sit there for a few minutes before I heard Nick yelling unmentionables as he wallowed in his feeble snowshoes and the other two made their way from the road to the cabin. Once everyone arrived at the cabin, Z and Nick ate a quick snack and quickly hit the sack, while Adam and I made dinner under a mostly full moon. Perfectly sized for four abreast Sleep was almost had... We "woke up" at 2:15 am and we were finally moving by 3:40ish after a coffee and breakfast of cold muffins and a crushed banana. From talking with Peter, camped near us the night before, who had summited with spadflyer12 the day before, we decided it would be a good idea to poach their great trench to the North Couloir, not that I needed it: the touring set up finally came in handy! About 6/10 mile and 25 minutes later we were at the base of the Couloir where Z and Nick dropped their poles and snowshoes, strapped on Crampons and started up the nice boot track that Peter and spadflyer12 and put in for us, thanks guys. Adam waiting for everone to hury up After about 15+ minutes I had gotten my AT boots off, hiking boots on and skins and skis attached to my pack. The guys leaving me behind. Thanks to the others efforts in packing down the snow I was able to quickly catch up and we had all gotten to the top of the couloir in 45 minutes flat, far less than the 1-2 hours we had budgeted for. Now, I had seriously considered skiing from the summit, but after much internal debate and bugging folks about skiing the route, I decided that there was not enough of a reward for the risk of getting the ski descent, in hindsight a good decision. After I dropped my skis and taken some cool photos of Alamosa with a red moon setting behind the San Juans we were off on the traverse. Now whenever I have read about this traverse it always seemed rather straightforward. Oh, but how a simply little traverse can really suck the life out a climb. Although, there is not much to it, we still found plenty of time to stand around and argue over what was the best way to go. Here are a few statements that can give you a good idea of how four people can really make an easy task difficult: "Which way is it?" "Let my check the track on my GPS Phone." "No! Just go toward the damn hourglass!" The Hourglass "But you see here we are .03 miles from the track, so head down." "Maybe we should just head up" "No, John that's a drop off." "Oh..." After about an hour and fifteen minutes of this, it was 6:30am and we were at the final boulder before a long stretch of steep snow that led to the hourglass. After a quick snack, Adam and Z decided that they weren't feeling it and decided they'd take a slow return back to camp. The traverse Nick and I decided that we were a big go for continuing, so after a snack and some water we started switch-backing our way to the hourglass. The climbing in the hourglass was a breeze, the snow was great and we were soon above the hourglass. Nick below entering the hourglass John in the hourglass 'That was easy', but no we had to get up the face. To the right was essentially a frozen water fall as far as the eye could see. To the left were Peter and spadflyer12's prints, leading onto thin, but supportive snow. So we headed that way... However, their prints ended and we were forced with either climbing the rotten rock or climbing up a 100 foot high ice filled fissure(or whatever you call it) with some thin snow and rime on it. I call it ice, but truly it was just verglas about .5"-1" thick. The ice was unsupportive, it took three to four strikes with my axe to get purchase and the points on my crampons couldn't gain purchase. Somehow we made it up this section without incident which in turn led to a right(east) dog-leg shaped section of not very supportive but not steep snow interspersed with a few sections of short class 3 moves. After this section was a quick steep section of loose wind deposited snow, which led to the summit. Now I should have looked like this: But instead I looked like this: Nick's POV video of the ascent: After waiting a few minutes for Nick to arrive on the summit, we took some pictures of the clouds and each other and started down. Little Bear to Blanca Traverse On the trip back, we kept our crampons on, down the face to the ice section was uneventful, I faced in for about 50% of the time. Instead of jumping back into the ice from hell we stayed west of it and on a mini-cornice which allowed us to skip all but the final 10 feet or so of the ice. Would have been nice to see this prior to getting on the ice-hell. From here it was a quick traverse over to the top of the hourglass and a methodical descent back through and out the other side. Nick's POV video of the descent: After we switched-backed to the boulder we staged at on the way up, we stopped had some lunch and then began the "long" traverse back to notch, which didn't take very long. At the top of the notch (above the north couloir) Nick glissaded down while I again took my boots off and put on my AT boots. After messing around with this mess for who knows how long, I descended into the couloir and clipped into my binding... The snow was not pleasant (texture of wet cement almost dried), I was tired and my pack weighed more than a tungsten beach ball. Adam attempted to take a video, but I was such a chicken-s**t for the first few turns that he ran out of memory filming me standing there panting. Finally, I got a rhythm together about third the way down and started connecting carves with jump turns! It was a great way to finish the climb, I was able to ski all the way to the cabin and a well-deserved Dales. It had only taken eight hours, cabin to cabin. We hung around the cabin for about two hours, had lunch and lazily got packed up. I started to ski out, but the snow was still supportive from the night before, so about a half mile from the cabin I just threw everything on the pack and hiked out. 24 hours later were back to the car. Finaly done The drive down was really unpleasant, I truly see no reason to drive that high, it takes just as long to walk out as it does to drive! In fact, Adam just walked behind us the whole way. After what seemed like all of my thirties had expired we finally arrived back at Nick's car and we drove out to the highway. The weather moved in almost the second we hit the high way. Where we had the pleasure of driving all the way home in a blizzard, it took 6.5 hours. Oh and Walsenburg and Fort Garland don't serve coffee on Sundays. Jerks. Final thoughts: I don't know how I would have had the energy to lug my skis up to the summit and then had to legs to ski out. It made me have a true respect for the folks that can do that on this mountain. All and all it was alot of type 2 fun with some type 3 fun on the road. I am really glad it went as well as it did and that I got to climb with such great guys! Congratulations again to Bergstiegen. Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Little Bear Peak or How I learned to stopped worrying and love the Lake Como road

Vertical gained: ~4,237 feet
Mileage: ~7.5 miles
Sorry I left my GPS off.

In March Bean put up a trip report of his successful ski descent of Little Bear, I had been waiting all winter for a report from LB. I had not included LB in my pre-baby plans last spring and I had regretted it ever since. So, when I saw that Little Bear was in for a good spring climb, I decided that I'd see if I could get group together to give it a go. This was particularly acute since this winter was a real bust. A winter where I had to turn back twice on days when the weather was perfect and so was my conditioning. I was ready to succeed on a summit attempt and Mount Oxford or Antero was not going to be sufficient. With that in mind I talked my climbing partner, Adam (Beard of Justice), into give a Little Bear a try, perhaps even get a ski descent in. I figured that it might be nice to get a whole crew together from the site so I put a forum post up. After a weather delay and few cancellations we were left with a "team" of four: Somewhat of a Prick (not just a clever name)-Nick, Beard of Justice, guangxiren-Z and myself.

We meet at my house in Denver at 11 am on 4/12/2014 and drove down to the Lake Como road in two cars.

Nick wisely chose to ditch his Xterra at the parking spoke at 8,800 at around 3 pm.

So, Z and Nick crammed their stuff and themselves with Adam and me and we started crawling up the road. The crew had to jump out on at least ten occasions to help me get over some sketch sections. Finally, at around 4:15 PM we parked at Jaws .5, but not before Somewhat of a Prick tried to talk me to into continuing on... 'No, thank you.'

At this point it was decided that Adam would leave his AT (and his only means for flotation)set up at the car and we'd take our two tents with us just in case some jerk-face had taken our god given right to Hotel Como(which I am pretty sure Z thought was a real hotel with a toilet.) The first few miles were interesting with Adam and I arguing about whom had made the correct decision: me lugging skis on my shoulder or Adam free from the extra weight of touring boots and skis. Around Jaws 1 the snow arrived and had zero support to it. So, I threw my ski crap on and started skinning, while laughing at Adam's utter stupidity. "Sure you don't want to drop you pack and go get your stuff?" "No!" "Ok, then it's your funeral." Except the joke was on me! The snow was not continues, which meant I had to spend most of my time hiking in my AT boots (which are not comfortable) and when I could skin, my rhythm was crap and I couldn't get into it.

At some point in my endless transition between "hiking" and "skinning" I ran into Bergstiegen(with Aerodan), fresh off a successful ski descent of Blanca and Ellingwood. Now deep down, I thought it was pretty awesome she was done with the Lake Como road forever(!!), however I had no energy to give my usual "That's awesome!!" response. I think all I could muster was "ok, cool..." Anyway, back on track on with the story. Not long after this we found continues snow and I was able to catch up and pass the chumps with the snowshoes and I found to my great delight that the hotel had a vacancy! I had to sit there for a few minutes before I heard Nick yelling unmentionables as he wallowed in his feeble snowshoes and the other two made their way from the road to the cabin. Once everyone arrived at the cabin, Z and Nick ate a quick snack and quickly hit the sack, while Adam and I made dinner under a mostly full moon.

Sleep was almost had...
We "woke up" at 2:15 am and we were finally moving by 3:40ish after a coffee and breakfast of cold muffins and a crushed banana. From talking with Peter, camped near us the night before, who had summited with spadflyer12 the day before, we decided it would be a good idea to poach their great trench to the North Couloir, not that I needed it: the touring set up finally came in handy! About 6/10 mile and 25 minutes later we were at the base of the Couloir where Z and Nick dropped their poles and snowshoes, strapped on Crampons and started up the nice boot track that Peter and spadflyer12 and put in for us, thanks guys.

After about 15+ minutes I had gotten my AT boots off, hiking boots on and skins and skis attached to my pack.

Thanks to the others efforts in packing down the snow I was able to quickly catch up and we had all gotten to the top of the couloir in 45 minutes flat, far less than the 1-2 hours we had budgeted for. Now, I had seriously considered skiing from the summit, but after much internal debate and bugging folks about skiing the route, I decided that there was not enough of a reward for the risk of getting the ski descent, in hindsight a good decision.

After I dropped my skis and taken some cool photos of Alamosa with a red moon setting behind the San Juans we were off on the traverse.

Now whenever I have read about this traverse it always seemed rather straightforward.

Oh, but how a simply little traverse can really suck the life out a climb. Although, there is not much to it, we still found plenty of time to stand around and argue over what was the best way to go. Here are a few statements that can give you a good idea of how four people can really make an easy task difficult: "Which way is it?" "Let my check the track on my GPS Phone." "No! Just go toward the damn hourglass!"

"But you see here we are .03 miles from the track, so head down." "Maybe we should just head up" "No, John that's a drop off." "Oh..." After about an hour and fifteen minutes of this, it was 6:30am and we were at the final boulder before a long stretch of steep snow that led to the hourglass. After a quick snack, Adam and Z decided that they weren't feeling it and decided they'd take a slow return back to camp.

Nick and I decided that we were a big go for continuing, so after a snack and some water we started switch-backing our way to the hourglass.
The climbing in the hourglass was a breeze, the snow was great and we were soon above the hourglass.

'That was easy', but no we had to get up the face. To the right was essentially a frozen water fall as far as the eye could see. To the left were Peter and spadflyer12's prints, leading onto thin, but supportive snow. So we headed that way... However, their prints ended and we were forced with either climbing the rotten rock or climbing up a 100 foot high ice filled fissure(or whatever you call it) with some thin snow and rime on it. I call it ice, but truly it was just verglas about .5"-1" thick. The ice was unsupportive, it took three to four strikes with my axe to get purchase and the points on my crampons couldn't gain purchase. Somehow we made it up this section without incident which in turn led to a right(east) dog-leg shaped section of not very supportive but not steep snow interspersed with a few sections of short class 3 moves. After this section was a quick steep section of loose wind deposited snow, which led to the summit.

Now I should have looked like this:

But instead I looked like this:

Nick's POV video of the ascent:

After waiting a few minutes for Nick to arrive on the summit, we took some pictures of the clouds and each other and started down.

On the trip back, we kept our crampons on, down the face to the ice section was uneventful, I faced in for about 50% of the time.

Instead of jumping back into the ice from hell we stayed west of it and on a mini-cornice which allowed us to skip all but the final 10 feet or so of the ice.

Would have been nice to see this prior to getting on the ice-hell. From here it was a quick traverse over to the top of the hourglass and a methodical descent back through and out the other side.

Nick's POV video of the descent:

After we switched-backed to the boulder we staged at on the way up, we stopped had some lunch and then began the "long" traverse back to notch, which didn't take very long.

At the top of the notch (above the north couloir) Nick glissaded down while I again took my boots off and put on my AT boots. After messing around with this mess for who knows how long, I descended into the couloir and clipped into my binding...

The snow was not pleasant (texture of wet cement almost dried), I was tired and my pack weighed more than a tungsten beach ball. Adam attempted to take a video, but I was such a chicken-s**t for the first few turns that he ran out of memory filming me standing there panting. Finally, I got a rhythm together about third the way down and started connecting carves with jump turns!

It was a great way to finish the climb, I was able to ski all the way to the cabin and a well-deserved Dales.

It had only taken eight hours, cabin to cabin.

We hung around the cabin for about two hours, had lunch and lazily got packed up. I started to ski out, but the snow was still supportive from the night before, so about a half mile from the cabin I just threw everything on the pack and hiked out. 24 hours later were back to the car.

The drive down was really unpleasant, I truly see no reason to drive that high, it takes just as long to walk out as it does to drive! In fact, Adam just walked behind us the whole way. After what seemed like all of my thirties had expired we finally arrived back at Nick's car and we drove out to the highway. The weather moved in almost the second we hit the high way.

Where we had the pleasure of driving all the way home in a blizzard, it took 6.5 hours. Oh and Walsenburg and Fort Garland don't serve coffee on Sundays. Jerks.

Final thoughts: I don't know how I would have had the energy to lug my skis up to the summit and then had to legs to ski out. It made me have a true respect for the folks that can do that on this mountain.

All and all it was alot of type 2 fun with some type 3 fun on the road. I am really glad it went as well as it did and that I got to climb with such great guys! Congratulations again to Bergstiegen.

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

SurfNTurf	Nice TR 4/16/2014 4:40am Congrats to y'all on a fine summit. I appreciated the bits of humor -- on a mountain like Little Bear, it definitely helps sometimes, haha.
Somewhat of a Prick	Image 17 4/16/2014 1:28pm Says it all....
jmanner	SurfNTurf I don't know how... 4/16/2014 1:31pm ...you guys made it down that gully on the other-side of valley! I looked at it, took pictures of it and thought about it, but I could not see how you did that! Kudos man that's impressive!
spadflyer12	About that ice from hell... 4/16/2014 4:27pm I didn't think it was all that bad, in fact I actually enjoyed it! That traverse on the other hand... I've done it 3 times now and I don't think I've ever done it the same way twice. Coming back it it much, much easier to see and follow the cairns.
bergsteigen	Icy Bear! 4/16/2014 4:38pm I guess 2014 is the year of the ice falls above the hourglass. I heard that beta from Eric, and wondered how bad it had gotten with the melting. Hope the guys I met skiing/boarding on B&E didn't attempt it on Sunday either. Guess all ”easy” climbs of this peak are once again out for the year. Congrats on a tough summit! I guess you still have to love that road, you have another peak to get up there, unless you take the Zapatta Falls route for Ell. On the peak skiing front: Try some of the more skiable peaks in good condition first. The tough ones sometimes suck the life out of you!
jmanner	I'll be back... 10/24/2014 7:21pm there's not way around it. I just have to come to terms with it. :cry:

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