His Mountain

• Date: 17 July, 2023
• Peaks: Mt. Blue Sky (formerly Mt. Evans) [edit.]
• Route: 2nd Apron Right Side
• Mileage: 1.7mi
• Vertical: 1550ft
• Time: 9hrs
• Partners: Nathan

I'm just going to preface this report by saying, yes, we did absolutely cheat on this one! The goal for the day was to get some practice doing technical alpine rock, so we decided to call it a day in the summit parking lot and hitch a ride down. To be honest, this was quite enjoyable as opposed to having to hike the super long distance back to Summit Lake!

Since he shares the same surname as the (current) namesake of the mountain, of course I had to invite Nathan to join. It's his mountain! We'd been meaning to get on some bigger climbs for a while, so this was a chance for us to make sure our climbing skills were dialed before we'd attempt anything much more intense. We were at the Summit Lake lot by 5:30 and didn't take too long to get going, except to talk to the car next to us about their plans to climb the Black Wall (one of the climbers, by coincidence, being one of my coworkers at the CU Outdoor Program). The drive and hike were very pretty with first light, and the alpenglow made the wall feel so much bigger than it was!

We were a bit concerned about the snowfield we'd encounter at the base of the climb, but from what we could tell from far away it wouldn't be too bad. We got to the base of the snow, feeling confident that it wouldn't be too bad. That all changed when we actually stepped onto the snow! It was pretty solid, meaning one slip would mean a pretty big slide back to the talus. It wouldn't have been deadly, but definitely a bad time if we had fallen. Spikes might have been preferable to approach shoes! Nathan was in tennis shoes, so I threw a rope down to him to use as a handrail when I made it to the base of the rock.

I had assumed that I would lead every pitch for the day, since Nathan only had a little bit of previous trad climbing experience. We sorted our gear perched on the base of the rock and I started off up the wall. I initially followed a large right-leaning flake, then broke off left. Most parties decide to go right, since it's easier climbing. I didn't realize this, and got to a point where the climbing was decidedly not 5.7. I lowered a bit and swung over to the correct crack. I suppose now I'd changed our pursuit into an aid ascent, but I didn't mind the style as long as we made forward progress. I made the first anchor on the good ledge below the big "M" feature described on Mountain Project.

At this point Nathan asked me if he could take a lead. I said sure! Might as well get some practice on the sharp end, and if he felt confident he could lead it then I felt confident. The nature of the route meant that, no matter what, it'd be pretty hard for him to stray off route and make it much harder. He started up towards the right side of the "M," past a couple of tricky moves on dirt clods. He placed pro where it was needed, and continued on up to the second belay. Another party was catching up with us at this point, and we decided we'd probably let them pass us if it looked like they were faster than us.

We were feeling pretty good, so we decided to give the next pitch a go before letting the other party pass us. We swung leads and I headed up on solid flakes. I trended left until a made it to a fist crack, which I climbed up into a large dihedral. It turns out that I should have gone even further left, and technically this was a different route. Oh well! The point today was to see how fast we could climb, while keeping our systems in check, and so the goal was really to just make it to the top however we could. I built a belay on a comfortable step and belayed up Nathan. The second party had caught up to us at this point, building an anchor on the ledge just below me.

Nathan decided to take the next lead as well, and made steady progress following the corner of the dihedral. The party below us was moving pretty fast compared to us, so they headed up just right of us at the same time. It was a nice conversational belay for me! The other party passed just as I was about to head up, and cemented our spot in 2nd place. I followed Nathan's pitch just in time to hear the other guys announce "hey, it's Class 3, let's untie!" Great news! We untied after four technical pitches, and just had some Class 3 terrain above us to the ridge.

Now we knew the hard part of the day was over. All that was left was walking over to the summit to say we tagged a 14er in the process! We followed the trail (or at least, Nathan told me to) until it made the most sense to just follow the ridge proper to the summit. We summitted at something like 14:30. We had already mostly decided we didn't want to hike down if we could hitch a ride, so we went into the parking lot and stuck out a thumb. It only took a few minutes for somebody to offer. Never has a 14er felt so easy at the end of the day!