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Peak(s)  Mt. Harvard  -  14,424 feet
Date Posted  01/20/2017
Modified  01/21/2017
Date Climbed   01/18/2017
Author  brerrabbit
 Mt. Harvard Daytrip via Frenchman Creek   
Mt. Harvard (14,420')
Route: Frenchman Creek
RT Distance: 17.1 miles
Elevation Gain: 6,000'
RT time: 16 hours (10:20 to summit)
Members of group: Gary Neben and MarkMadness

Mt. Harvard via Frenchman Creek has been a winter goal of mine, ever since it demoralized me with deep trenching only to the first creek crossing in January 2016. I never attempted it again that season. The first day of winter 2016-2017 I summited Mt. Columbia and looked over at Harvard, taking multiple photos of the ridge conditions and the Frenchman Creek treeline/basin foolishly thinking I'd be coming up that drainage within the next week. Unfortunately the next week I found myself trenching the route only to ~11,050', not long after the Colorado Trail junction. Ten days later me and 3 others headed to Harvard to refresh the trench where we extended the trench to treeline. Ten more days passed with significant snow falling during that time across the whole state, especially in the Sawatch. We hoped our trench wasn't completely buried but we couldn't ignore the fantastic weather window on Wednesday: 15-20 mph winds with bluebird skies. This felt like the first good weather window in 3 weeks so we had to take our shot.
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Looking at PT ~13,975 from near treeline

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Almost to treeline

We were shooting for a start time of 3 AM and were on the trail by 3:15. We found some intermittent ski and light snowshoe tracks to the FR 387 junction just over a mile into the route and were soon on our own, following the slight divot in the snow marking the trench that 4 of us set in place 10 days ago. I'm not convinced that the prior trench was all that useful since we didn't sink in that much further if we strayed from the prior trench. We ended up making it to the Colorado Trail junction in just over 3 hours. We had hoped to be able to stay on our prior trench but lost it at around 11,100' and basically followed the path of least resistance (which was more of a path of a little more resistance than necessary) but we made it to treeline eventually by around 8:15 AM. I'd say the path of least resistance stays within the creek at the bottom of the drainage. We went too far to the left (south) and found ourselves dropping elevation slightly to get into the gully that exits treeline.
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Looking back to treeline

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Harvard-Columbia Traverse

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Harvard-Columbia traverse with MarkMadness at right

Once we gained the basin we realized we weren't going to be stashing our snowshoes anytime soon. The basin was blanketed in snow making it both a beautiful and demoralizing sight, knowing we would be wearing our snowshoes much higher than we had hoped. We discussed the best route to treeline and decided to gain the ridge between UN 13,374 and Harvard, staying primarily on ribs with intermittent rocks. We were surprised to see no natural slides on any aspects at this point, especially given that yesterday was the first sunny and clear day the Sawatch had seen in a week or two. We stayed on as low angle of terrain as possible as we worked our way to the ridge at ~13,500, slogging through fairly deep snow.
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Working our way to the ridge

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Nearing the ridge at ~13,500'

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The ridge to Harvard from 13,500

Upon reaching the ridge we realized we would need to keep our snowshoes on as the snow was still quite deep on the ridge since winds had been fairly light over the past few days (cant complain about light winds in winter!). We made our way along the ridge on some gentle ups and downs to our final steep slog to PT ~13,975.
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Looking towards Columbia from the ridge between UN 13,374 and Harvard

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Nearing PT 13,975

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Looking towards Columbia from near PT 13,975

We decided to take the ridge, going directly over the top of PT 13,975. Going directly over this ridge is not recommended in winter if you're on a time crunch. Up until this point we felt we were making relatively good time but lost a good hour or so getting into some more challenging terrain by staying primarily ridge proper. It was mostly class 2/3 with one class 4 downclimb requiring some stem moves. The snow was fairly sugary on this section so we donned microspikes and took out our ice axes which we used to the summit and back to PT 13,975. We eventually made it through the ridge of PT 13,975 to the final summit ridge to Mt. Harvard.
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One of the scrambling portions near PT 13,975. We went directly over the block at center.

The final summit ridge was less technical at class 2+ with steep semi-loose snow making step-kicking more challenging than we would've liked. There was one portion where we were postholing to our hips. The ridge had lots of mini saddles hidden from view. We eventually summited at 1:40 PM for a total ascent time of 10 hours and 20 minutes. On the descent we retraced our steps to the PT 13,975-Harvard saddle and bypassed the ridge on a snowy bypass which saved us a lot of time. We put on snowshoes around 13,600' and followed our trench back to treeline.
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Descending the ridge from PT 13,975 to the Harvard-13,975 saddle

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Gary and I on the summit

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Mark and I on the summit

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Snow traverse which avoids the difficulties of the ridge from PT 13975 to the 13975-Harvard saddle

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Looking at our trench while on the descent, showing how we gained the ridge at 13,500

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Trench on the descent to treeline

The descent from treeline to the car felt like it took forever, made even worse by darkness falling upon us by the final creek crossing. We finally made it to the trailhead by 7:20 PM for RT time of 16 hours. It was great to have such great weather with the winds staying below 20 mph and the temperature feeling balmy in the basin when below the ridge. All in all it was one of those great winter days you never forget!



Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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Comments or Questions
Trotter
User
nice
1/21/2017 10:31am
long day, but beautiful scenery


SteveVM
User
Great Job
1/21/2017 12:54pm
Harvard is not easy to climb in the winter and you took a great line. Very impressive in one day. My son and I (I was 57 at the time) took two days to climb this route in January 5 years ago.


Yikes
User
nice job
1/21/2017 6:33pm
Thanks for sharing the greats pics. Congrats!


hett
User
Good work!
1/22/2017 7:08pm
I'm sad our previous trench didn't help much though!


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