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Peak(s):  Grays Peak  -  14,275 feet
Torreys Peak  -  14,272 feet
Quandary Peak  -  14,272 feet
Date Posted:  07/15/2020
Date Climbed:   07/02/2019
Author:  jvirene
 Harder routes up easier peaks   

Harder Routes up Easier Peaks

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Philip and I wanted to keep exploring new routes, but we did so on already familiar peaks

Grays and Torreys via Kelso Ridge (Climbed 07/02/2019)

Stats:

Mileage: 7.75 Miles (Road Closure at TH)

Elevation gain: 3500'

Time: 6:00 Hours

Difficulty: 6/10

Preface: Philip and I did not want to drive out too far. This route is perfect, as it is barely an hour away from Morrison, and we were very intrigued by the Kelso ridge climb. Some hikers say that the small knife edge on this route is a good preparation for the knife edge on Capitol Peak. Although this was not why we chose this route, we were still interested in finding an airy, exposed climb to continue to develop our abilities, and this route seemed like a great choice.

Preparation: Getting ready for this trip was nothing out of the ordinary, we brought standard gear for the hike, but were less prepared than on other peaks due to this route being fairly short, and close to home. We did bring helmets, as we do on all of our class three/four routes. We made the hour drive out to the trailhead, and were stopped in our tracks by an impressive amount of avalanche debris, that forced us to park our car about 1/2 a mile from the trailhead. So maybe a quick note: you may encounter this up to early July, but this was after 2018 winter- a higher than usual snow year.

Approach: Hiking up to the actual trailhead did not take very long maybe fifteen minutes, and from this point it was a very short hike to the base of Kelso ridge. The trail is very solid, and the elevation gain is consistent throughout, there are not any sections of excessively steep trail. Despite this being in early July, there were only a couple other groups hiking, and they were taking the standard route. Something that for some reason, struck me on this hike, was the beauty of the basin that lies beneath Grays and Torreys. For a while, Phil and I had been hiking in the Sawatch, Elks, and Sangre de Cristo mountains and I forgot that despite how crowded the front range peaks can get, they are still gorgeous.

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Snowmelt along the trail in the beautiful basin beneath Grays and Torreys.

Eventually, the trail for the Kelso ridge hike takes a hiker's right off the standard route to the saddle between Grays and Torreys, and from here the entire ridge comes into view. Philip and I took a moment here to check out the route, and we were very stoked to begin scambling. The sun was out, and weather and temperature perfect.

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Kelso ridge in beautiful early summer conditions.

Quickly, we worked our way up the rest of the hiking, and soon enough we were on the ridge, ready for the class three.

Looking down the mountain, I saw a guy and his dog heading up the Kelso ridge route. I wondered if this guy was just following us and he did not know the route, because I wasn't sure how dog friendly some of these class three portions would be. We continued up the mountain and soon enough, this guy and his dog were passing us. I thought he did not know what he was doing, but it turns out him and his dog were A+ climbers! His dog was a chocolate lab and the two of them were climbing this ridge way faster than us. Needless to say, Philip and I were very impressed.

The ridge: Kelso ridge has a lot of fun climbing and some great class four variants if you're looking. For instance, Philip and I found the "white rock wall" which is pictured on photo #12 on the route and climbed directly up, which made for a very fun and technical option up the ridge on solid rock. This portion is only class four, and nothing too scary or exposed, but it makes the route a bit more interesting.

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Philip working his way up this chimney.

The next noteworthy potion of this ridge comes at the very end. The "knife edge". There is a brief climb to get up to this portion, then a short traverse across to the snowfield. This section of the hike was my favorite due to the solid rock and the exposure.

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Climbing up to the knife ridge.

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Two angles of the quick walk across the ridge

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Philip at the very top of the white rock, looking at the remaining 100' of hiking up to the summit. The actual route skirts to the right of this rock, but Phil wanted a cool photo, I think he got one!

Once we completed the ridge, we hopped on the snow and booted our way up in our trail runners. No traction was needed as there was a pretty solid boot pack, which you can see in the previous photo.

The summit: About five minutes after we summited Torreys, we watched a fighter jet blow past all of the mountains. We briefly enjoyed the gorgeous views of the basin, and continued towards Grays. The man and his dog were completely out of sight by this point, so we just assumed that he was already heading down. From the summit we saw the entire traverse to Grays.

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The short hike down to the saddle and up Grays in full view from the summit of Torreys.

We made quick work of the hike up Grays, and again, sat for a few minutes of rest on the summit.

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Summit views on Grays peak.

Descent: We hiked back down to the saddle and afterwards, decided to glissade down the mountain. Clearly, many other people had the same idea, as there were many tracks of other people's descents. This made descending the mountain a lot quicker and a lot more fun!

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There are plenty of lines of people glissading down from the saddle of Grays and Torreys.

After the glissade, we hiked the remaining three miles back to the car in high spirits after the short yet very fun day of hiking. We were able to soak in the views of the beautiful basin, and I took plenty of pictures.

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Views on our return from the hike.

Review: Kelso Ridge was a really sick hike, it combines the elements of a short day of hiking with sustained and fun scambling to maximize the effort to reward ratio of the hike. The glissade added some exhilaration and velocity to our day, which was just an extra bonus. As I mentioned earlier, the ridge has a couple of class four variants that you can take if you would like to make the climb a bit more interesting and spicy. Overall, this was one of my favorite hikes, and I'd highly recommend it even for an intro to class three climbing.

Quandary via the West Ridge (Climbed 07/18/2019)

Stats:

Mileage: 6.00 Miles

Elevation gain: 2650'

Time: 8:00 Hours

Difficulty: 5/10

Preface: After Kelso ridge, Philip and I found that these Class 3 routes up peaks that we had already done were really fun, so we decided to do another one. There was nothing in particular about Quandary's west ridge that caught our eye aside from the fact that it looks dope, so we decided to do it.

Preparation: Preparation for this route was again, nothing out of the ordinary. We did triple check the trailhead to ensure that we found the correct route. One failure in our preparation however, was that we did not realize that you're supposed to descent via Cristo Couloir, as opposed to what we did, which was descending the west ridge. This added time and effort to our hike, however I do think that descending a ridge on solid rock is superior to descending a steep and loose gulley.

Approach: The approach to Quandary's west ridge is short and sweet. There is solid trail throughout and we had perfect summer conditions throughout the hike. Once you are closer to the ridge, the grade of the trail steepens significantly and Philip and I built some leg muscle climbing up this portion. This route is not crowded, so we were the only ones hiking until we saw a father and two kids hiking some of the surrounding peaks. Hiking through this area was very beautiful so I took quite a few pictures.

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Lush vegetation and lots of snowmelt in the earlier part of our hike up to the ridge.

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We found a nice spot for a quick break to enjoy the views.

Once we got closer to the ridge where the grade of the trail steepens, the gnarly west ridge of Quandary came into better view.

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This ridge is a lot longer than Kelso, we were excited for a more sustained class three hike.

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A view of the climb ahead from the beginning of the ridge.

Once on the ridge, at around 13300' the climbing comes up very shortly afterwards. This was another climb in which Philip and I were pretty intent on finding some class four/five variants, so we added some time onto the day by scouting harder lines and slowly picking our way up. The first was this nice large bump on the ridge, Philip climbed while I got some nice shots of him sending.

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Made it to the top

We continued working our way along the ridge, with no other obstacles along the way until we reached the crux, where we picked our line up the steep rock face. We cut to the right of the standard route, which proved to be very exposed, yet fun.

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Phil's line up the rock

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Philip worked the angle super hard on this picture so it looks very exposed, it really wasn't though.

The summit: This being the middle of July, and a gorgeous day in the mountains, there were a few other groups on top of the mountain, but we sat there for a while, looking back down at the ridge, and enjoying the beauty of the mountains. As I mentioned, from the summit you are supposed to descent via Cristo Couloir however, Philip and I did not come across this in our preparation for the hike, so we just descended the west ridge.

We were not very tired at the summit, we enjoyed all the climbing and we felt energized and mentally prepared to down climb the west ridge, and did so without any sort of trouble. Descending the ridge took a bit longer, as there was some rockfall and steep exposed portions that we were very careful on. Otherwise, it went off without a hitch! By the time we were off the ridge, we were questioning whether the route was really four miles, because at the time we did not know that the four mile roundtrip was accounting for a Cristo Couloir descent. We were getting a little tired, however were still super hyped about the summit and awesome route that we found.

We glissaded down the steeper portion of the hike up to the ridge, then made the short hike back to the car.

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Our descent line (to the left below the rocks)

Once back to the car, we were a bit tired from the hike, and we decided to stop in Silverthorne for some Cheeba Hut. Highly recommend after a long day of hiking!

Review: Quandary West ridge was a very fun hike overall. Some of the best parts about this hike were the isolation that the West ridge offers, despite Quandary being a very popular mountain, and the fun scrambling with airy exposure on some of our variant route choices. Now we know that this route descends via the Cristo Couloir, explaining the extra mileage that we did, and we learned our lesson about familiarizing ourselves with the route to avoid this mistake!

Overall Review: Although Philip and I were already familiar with Grays, Torreys, and Quandary, doing these alternate routes and making our own variants was an excellent way to improve our climbing abilities and enjoy fun days in the mountains. Climbing via new routes is fun because it almost feels like you are climbing a new mountain, but you get to the summit and have a whole new level of familiarity with the mountain that you have climbed. I enjoyed these peaks a lot and repeating them was exciting due to these new routes. The lesson here is that even if you've already climbed the mountain, a different day could mean that it will have a lot more to offer.




Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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Comments or Questions
hogantheepic
User
Nice!
7/16/2020 12:48am
I feel like this idea is extremely underrated. Taking difficult routes up easy peaks certainly makes for more fun. I am quite disappointed by the number of people who choose to 'take the easiest route up the mountain' because they are there to check it off a list. Way to go!


ltlFish99
Nice report
7/17/2020 4:53pm
Nice report with wonderful pictures. I love that route up Torreys. It is a lot of fun.



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