This is an old climb from 2019

Mt Lindsey In Late Spring

I did this climb in 2019 when I was working on finishing the 14ers. I had started this report way back then and never finished until now. I was thinking the beta might be useful for anyone climbing newly opened Lindsey this spring. That March though we had witnessed snowmageddon with historic snow totals over every range making June Snowier than usual.

My partner and I, for an unknown reason, decided we would go for a sunrise summit on Lindsey. We had just met the week before while climbing the Blanca/Ellingwood combo, and were eager to tackle another peak together. The views of a snowy Lindsey that day had inspired the both of us. Sunrise was going to be 5:31 that morning so we agreed that a 1 am start would be sufficient. I had worked until 6 pm the previous evening and drove down from Fort Collins that night forgoing sleep in hopes of catching that elusive sunrise summit.

Day of Climb: Saturday June 15th, 2019

Peaks: Mt Lindsey and Iron Nipple

Trailhead: Huerfano/Lily Lake

Mileage and Elevation Gain: 10 miles rt and 3782 feet gained

We parked about a 1/4 mile or so from the trailhead where the road was blocked and started our climb at 12:53 am, ahead of schedule. The lower trail was very wet and difficult to navigate in the dark. We deviated from the route often to stay less wet and basically zig zagged our way through this area. At the creek crossing, we stripped down and crossed thigh high, ice cold water. I felt lucky to cross the fast moving creek without completely falling in (on our descent later that afternoon we did find a log up stream to walk across). Once we crossed the swollen creek, we toweled off and redressed, including dry socks and dry shoes which we had brought anticipating the need having seen a condition report from the week prior.

The trail from there to the ridge continued to be an adventure. GPS was useless as we meandered through a dark forest, over mounds of snow and cut across a talus slope complete with trap doors. I'm not sure we were ever actually on the trail until we finally hit the saddle between Lindsey and the Iron Nipple at 5:05 am.

From the saddle we started up the Northwest Ridge class 3 route. We were pleased to see from our vantage it looked mostly snow free, and we hoped that would remain the case.

As we climbed the early dawn light made for some magnificent views. We quickly realized though that a sunrise summit was not in the cards. Unfortunately, it took way more time getting to the saddle than we had expected. Still, we progressed quickly up the ridge while the sunrise quickly approached.

We hit the base of the crux right at sunrise. Unfortunately, we missed reaching our sunrise summit, but we were still treated to some awe inspiring views. The early start more than paid off. It had taken us 4 and 1/2 hours to reach this point and the beautiful sunrise more than energized us for the upcoming crux wall.

The class 3/4 crux was definitely the hardest terrain I had been on thus far in my short 14er journey. I was happy to follow my partner as she showed the way and even managed to make it look easy. At first, I was extremely apprehensive as I started up, but quickly got comfortable after discovering how solid the rock was. It seemed like we had hit some class 4 terrain in there, but I couldn't say for sure. We made quick work of it though and were soon on the false summit with only a short distance left to reach the true summit.

Surprisingly, the upper ridge was pretty snowy for this late in the season. It was not difficult though to traverse in our crampons and we quickly reached the summit of Mt. Lindsey at 6:35 am. The views all around were astounding, especially those of the Blanca masiff. The conditions on the approach had been challenging, but the superb ridge and upper mountain conditions had more than made up for it. We had lucked out with nearly perfect weather too, so we lingered on the summit for a bit before starting our descent.

We then chose to descend via the Northwest Gully route. We hadn't really studied this route though (thinking we'd descend the ridge), and initially struggled finding the entrance and found ourselves scrambling a bit to get back on route. The gully snow was good. Luckily, with our insanely early start the snow hadn't softened up too much and we quickly descended it back to the saddle.

Once at the saddle, we still had some juice left in the tank and decided to add unranked 13er Iron Nipple to the schedule. The ridge in that direction was easy and it was only a short distance to the base of the Iron Nipple. A nice scramble followed and we were in short order on our second summit of the day. The views of Lindsey from there alone make this a worthy peak to climb.

We then briefly considered continuing on to Huerfano, but ultimately, decided we'd had enough and began the journey back to the trailhead. It had been a terrific day that I won't soon forget.