I've tried to keep my adventures local to the front range this year considering our current environment. Admittedly, I have escaped a few times to the Bells and Sawatch to get my climb on. It has been fun to focus on what's close to home and tackle the less trafficked climbs that I would likely never complete. This has also been my first real push into solo hiking which has been rewarding with many positives - speed, no group decisions, and unlimited options. On the other hand it is pretty lonely, especially in the dark. I do miss all my hiking buddies. Sharing any summit with a friend truly is special.

I got the idea for this climb from Cooper's Scramble Guide. He suggests McHenrys has the reputation for being one of the most difficult high peaks in RMNP via the standard route and a fine mountaineering challenge. Sign me up! After researching it on the map, I remembered Arrowhead was also close by Mchenrys. I had ice climbed the West Gully above Black Lake last November and was amazed by the view of both of these peaks. The idea of linking them up was intriguing.

Furthermore, I had some inspiration from Tommy C. and Alex H. who recently completed the Continental Divide Ultimate Linkup (CDUL). A small part of their journey included the Airplane route (5.11A) up Arrowhead and the traverse over to Mchenrys. No thanks on the 5.11A. Fortunately for us mortals, there is a mostly class 3 route (with some class 4) up Arrowhead! Game on!

Stats:
Distance: 12.5 miles
Elevation gain: tracks in Google Earth say 5,593 ft. But GAIA was closer to 4,500 ft. Bottom line, it's a big day.
Start time: 6AM
Finish time: 3:50 PM
*You can cruise on the approach but budget extra time for route finding. Sticking to class 3 requires some thoughtfulness. I stopped at the summits and Frozen Lake for a while so there is room to do this a lot faster. In fact, I think three runners that passed me early on the trail were already on Mchenrys when I started scrambling on Arrowhead.

Once you get to Black Lake, you get a good view of your route up the South side of Arrowhead. Take a trail on the north side of Black Lake that is easy to follow. I got lost a few times but eventually found my way. You mainly want to travel up and to the left until you get out of tree line. There is evidence of a trail and a few cairns so just do some bushwhacking and find your way to some slabby class 3 moves.

After traveling southwest/west for a bit, you will eventually start making your way up Arrowhead. There are a few cairns on the way and evidence of traffic on class 3 slab. Your goal is to eventually find this cracked leaning rock. Climb through it. Right past this is the crux of Arrowhead with some Class 4 moves. Some say you could do class 3 slightly to the left but it looked pretty exposed. I found the class 4 moves to be fun.

The rest of the climb is class 2 on a ramp up to the summit. I added a shot of Arrowhead from Mchenrys to give a better view of the route.

The view from the top is worth the effort. Excellent views of Longs, Pagoda and Spearhead. Don't forget to sign the summit log.

At this point I felt pretty fresh. I had lost some time route finding but it was only 10 am and the weather was perfect. It was time to head on over to Mchenrys. The journey looked rough but most the beta I read mentioned that it was Class 3-4 as long as you picked the right route. This turned out to be true. It started off as leaning class 2 as you made your way to the saddle. It then progressed to Class 3 with only a few spots of Class 4. If you got too far right from the ridge it was a lot of slab so I tried to stay close to it while avoiding the steep rock towers.

I got to the top around 11 am so it took a little over an hour to make the traverse. I rested for about 30 minutes, even closing my eyes thinking I would take a nap (which didn't happen). I ran into two other climbers that I saw earlier in the morning. They had done the standard route up Mchenrys which I would be using to get down to Stone Man Pass. I won't go into details as it's pretty easy to get down. There are a lot of cairns and a dirt path in some places. Just head to the Stone Man!

Stone Man Pass is a little bit before the actual Stone Man himself. In my opinion, this was the worst part of the whole trip. Maybe I took the wrong way down, maybe I was tired. It was one of the worst scree/dirt descents I have done. You have to butt slide in places and try and hold the rock on the side. There is a little bit of snow left at the bottom too and the only way to avoid it was to climb some sketchy slab. Maybe bring microsprikes for the snow? You make the call.

With the hard work done, I took my time to get back with a long break at Frozen Lake. The hike out offers great views of the hard work.