Route: E Partner South Ridge -> Partner Traverse -> W Partner S ridge/slopes descent

Trailhead: Pitkin

Distance: 13ish miles (gps track goes wonky on steep terrain)

Gain: 5800

Difficulty: 5.4 (optional), 5.easy (mandatory)

Brandon and I had been trying all summer to link up for a climb. But life can get in the way, and between babies and marriages and honeymoons and family visits, we each had our own things going on this summer. Thankfully, before the warm months drifted away, our schedules aligned and we were able to get out finally. During our research, we've been eyeing prospective ridgelines in the Gores. This weekend, the Partners called our names.

Full disclosure: we went into this climb with essentially no beta. We knew it went sans rope (or sin ropa, as Brandon said, though that might mean something else) for the adept scrambler, but beyond that, the ins and outs of the route were a mystery. Throughout the day, we certainly appreciated the "choose your own adventure-ness" this afforded us, but that likely means that our variations aren't the only way (or even the best way) to tackle this ridge. Regardless, it worked for us!

2:03 AM alarm. Why? Because 2:00 is way too early and 2:05 is way too late. I woke up, made coffee, picked up my bag, and promptly dumped my coffee on my sock. Made more coffee. That 2:00 alarm is looking like the right call now. I managed to not spill the second cup of coffee and drove through Evergreen to meet Brandon at the I70 park n ride. One of the best things about the Gores is the short drive. We pulled in to the Pitkin trailhead at 4:20, geared up, and hit the familiar Pitkin Lake trail by 4:30.

I've primarily hiked alone this summer, as I've found that the further down the 13er list one gets, the harder it is to find people with common goals. God bless the "down for anything" people, like Brandon. When hiking solo, I tend to dread the approaches below treeline and in the dark. They're lonely, claustrophobic, and every boulder and downed tree is a bear wanting to eat me. But with a partner, the approaches fly by. There's no time to be paranoid about the shadows. We're too busy catching up on life and chatting about climbs past, present, and future; and before we know it light has arisen and headlamps are off.

Our route veered off the industrious Pitkin Lake trail well before the lake, at a spot where the trail makes a left turn to avoid some cliffs. As we learned on the descent, perhaps a better route would be to stay on the trail until a meadow right before the upper bench where the lake is, or even go nearly to the lake and ascend a grassy slope up to the high ridge, but we didn't know what we didn't know, and undertook a steep bushwhack from the base of E Partner's south ridge. Our ascent consisted of weaving through trees up steep slopes, either grass or talus-y dirt. Learn from us and go a bit more to the west of the ridge before trying to ascend. Oh well, it went!

After fighting through boulders, scratchy shoulder-height trees, and stupid-ass thistles, we learned our lesson and traversed straight left. We hit an open grassy slope, lamented we could have dodged most of the bushwhacking if we'd have just ascended this the whole way, and scooted up to the ridge. Our next five hours appeared before us, as the jagged ridgeline of the Partners cirque came into view. It's one of those views that words can't adequately describe.

Upon surmounting the grassy slopes of the lower south ridge, the scrambling began in earnest. The day featured so much scrambling that details blend together, but the south ridge of E Partner began with a rock ridge scramble, then contoured upward on blocky terrain before tundra led us to the upper difficulties. We skirted a section of the upper ridge to reach a slabby, fractured face, which we climbed directly. I took a weakness that went at 5.4, while Brandon found what looked to be a bit harder line at the bottom before traversing right of my line and working his way up. These were probably the hardest few moves of the day, though this face could be avoided to the east via a third class line. After topping out on this face, a few more minutes of scrambling led to the summit of East Partner.

A lot of people talk about what peak has the best views. I'm sure there's a lot of peaks in a lot of ranges that have a claim, but the peaks of the central Gores have as valid of a claim as any. The entire snaking main ridgeline of the Gores was visible, from Eagle's Nest all the way to the southern peaks. The Slate Lake peaks looked close enough to touch.

We didn't linger too long on E Partner, as the meat of the day was before us. We scrambled west off the summit and quickly encountered a short notch, perhaps 10 feet deep, that required a low fifth downclimb. As with many of the difficult moves on the route, it wasn't too bad if you're six feet or taller, but shorter people would need some ingenuity.

The next section of ridge was consistent 3rd/4th class scrambling trending downward toward the saddle. Much of our route was ridge proper, though occasional forays onto the northern or southern aspects were executed. After a while, the scrambling led to a grassy saddle, and the exposure and difficulty eased momentarily.

The next section of ridge consisted of a number of towers. It was never clear at the base whether the tower would connect to the next, or whether it would cliff out. We found both. The descent off of one of the first towers was a low 5th fractured slab. I know some people rappel this section, but we found the downclimb manageable.

The tower right after the downclimb was steep, grassy, and blocky. However, upon reaching the top, I found an exposed knife edge that seemingly led to nothing. I scrambled out to the end of the knife edge, but didn't see any clear way to reach the saddle with the next tower. Instead, we pieced together some loose ledges on the south side and dropped into a gully below the saddle.

From this gully, it wasn't clear whether or not a climb out of the saddle to the next tower was possible. The wall was sheer rock and very steep. Our options were to climb up to the saddle and try, or descend the gully another 75 feet and go around the base of the cliffs. We elected for the latter. After descending, we peeked up at the next possible ascent point (next picture). It probably went at low-mid 5th, but we were concerned that once on the top, we would cliff out again and have no way forward without downclimbing the 5th class face. Rather than take the risk, we elected to circumvent the next couple hundred feet of cliffs around their base, then took the next viable option to regain the ridge: a talusy/slabby slope, probably 3rd class. Having no beta on the ridge hurt us here (no idea still if that section of ridge goes), but our workaround is definitely the most intuitive way.

We regained the ridge right at the saddle before the slab ledge traverse, which is one of the only things I remember from reading trip reports about this route months ago. Pictures of this section look terrifying, but it ended up being wildly fun. The ledge is about a shoe's width wide and is solid. As long as one isn't exposure-averse or have a particularly left-leaning weight distribution problem, this was a blast and not difficult. The whole section is probably 75 feet long.

After the slabs, the exposure relented and the terrain became blockier. There were no more downs, fortunately. Just ups. We clambered upward on the slopes and the ridge, traversed one last knife edge, and began the final push up the false summit of W Partner. As we neared the false summit, we spied a group of two coming directly up the south ridge of W Partner, which were the first people we'd seen all day that weren't microscopically far away.

Just below the false summit, we found yet another slabby face to climb. Short, but fun. Topping this face revealed there was a bit more scrambling to go, which we did. Topping that next point revealed that this also was not the true summit, but another falsey! Fortunately, the true summit was just a minute or two away. We scrambled over and sat on the summit of West Partner, about two and a half hours after leaving East. The traverse was more time-consuming than expected, but was undoubtedly one of the best in the state. We soaked in the summit glory for a while, talking with our new friends, alternating between shivering and sweating, depending on the current sun/cloud relationship.

Satisfied with the day and unsatisfied with the IT band twinges I was feeling, we nixed any thoughts of running the ridge to Outpost. We elected to drop below the ridgecrest off of the true summit and sidehill our way to the south ridge. In hindsight, we should have dropped a bit further a bit quicker, but we were able to skip repeating the difficulties past where the south ridge and Partner traverse meet. We continued skirting around ridge difficulties to the west until we found a suitable slope back into the Pitkin Lake drainage. A series of hidden cliffs separate the upper lake from the main lake, but after one misfire, we found a decent route to skier's right that brought us back to the main lake. The better descent route would be to stay on the ridge between W Partner and Outpost until above the main lake, then descend a grassy gully straight down. Or, one could take our route, but stay higher and further right than we did in the upper basin, which would avoid the cliffs and reveal grass and talus down to Pitkin Lake.

Once on the trail, we flew downward, excited to be able to move quickly again. The weather held for us, save for 15 seconds of light drizzle, and we powered forward with a 3/4 walk, 1/4 jog to the cars. We talked about how today could not have gone more perfectly, the merits of spending $400 on a tent, and where on earth a couple hiking down in front of us could have gone. We were gaining on them, and then suddenly they just teleported (found them eventually, but hot damn they were motoring). We arrived at the car with a round trip time of 10 hours 45 minutes.

This ended up being one of my favorite days ever. Everything went largely according to plan, the weather cooperated, and the route lived up to the hype. There are a lot of different type of ridge runs, all with their own merits, but in terms of pure ruggedness, difficulty while still being scrambleable, and jagged aesthetics, this one stands at the top.