The main purpose of this TR is to highlight a couple ridges in the IPW that have little to no existing beta online – Shoshoni’s NW Ridge and Blackfoot’s E Ridge – as well as provide a bit on the more well-documented Apache-Navajo-Niwot Traverse. Part of the fun of the first two adventures was the discover/explorative aspect, so I’ll try not to get into too much detail to preserve that for others.

TL;DR on the various pieces of this report:

• Shoshoni NW Ridge: I really liked this ridge, and think it’s appealing for a lot of different folks. Goes at class 3 (mayyybe even 2+) but plenty of options to spice up to 4/5. With easy access from Brainard Lake THs, it’s also easy to get to from the Front Range
• Apache-Navajo-Niwot: Main focus of this report is on finding the higher line for Niwot Ridge, which I felt kept that route fun vs. having to drop super low. I enjoyed the “thread the needle” aspects of Niwot to keep it 3^rd class, but the scrambling was slightly shorter than expected. Apache-Navajo lived up to it’s 4^th class rating but also was rather short
• Blackfoot E Ridge: I feel this ridge appeals to certain types of people – you either need to enjoy exposed high 4/low 5 or enjoy sense of adventure / figure it out style traverses (including tree schwacking). There are a looot of towers on this ridge and many of them have vertical/overhanging upclimbs or downclimbs. To keep this class 3 requires a lot of bypassing. Overall I enjoyed finding the way through but it was exhausting and time-consuming

August 3 – Shoshoni NW Ridge + Pond Skimming

• Mileage: 15.7
• Vert: 4,600 (though this involved an unnecessary ascent of Pawnee Peak for kicks)
• Class: 3 (opportunities to spice it up though)

Part I – Approach

I arrived to Brainard Lakes at the nice hour of 4am from a campsite just off the Peak 2 peak highway; the weather forecast was clear all day but I knew it would be a long day so wanted an early start. I hadn’t found any beta on Shoshoni’s NW ridge online (which seemed odd for a ridge so close to the Front Range) but slope angle maps showed a promising route, so I was excited to check it out. And even more interestingly, recent sat images in the Copernicus Browser showed a speck of light blue still surrounded by white high up in the basin, so it was potentially game on at a pond skimming area I’d had my eye on. With that, I’d be strapping the skis on the backpack for the day. At this time, my setup was a pair of Dynastar M-Free 108’s which are a fantastic resort ski but not exactly a lightweight backcountry ski great for packing on a 15 mile hike. I think my daypack with skis on was heavier than my pack for some overnights.

Very quickly I felt the weight. The trek from Brainard Lake to Long Lake, which I’d done a few times, felt much longer than usual, and within like 15 minutes I’d already banged the crap out of my tails on various rocks. The beautiful IPW east side sunrise helped distract for a bit, but it was otherwise a ‘put your head down and grind’ slog up the 2,300 vert to Pawnee Pass. I reached Pawnee pass around 6:20am (yeah yeah very fast pace), and ditched the skis and boots there as I wouldn’t need them for the Shoshoni section. It was so nice to have a light pack again.

Part II – Shoshoni

I dropped down the west side of Pawnee Pass down to about 11,500, before leaving the trail and working down through a collection of rock outcroppings. Once in the basin above Pawnee Lake, I contoured around to the base of slabs that led up to Shoshoni’s NW ridge. One of the things I liked about this route was it had the opportunity for slabby-type scrambling like you’d find in Rocky plus ridge running like you’d find elsewhere in the IPW. This slab area (and really the whole western side of the IPW, especially the lone eagle cirque) was very reminiscent of the Glacier Gorge/Longs area of RMNP, and climbing the slabs felt super similar to climbing parts of the Loft.

Climbing the slabs put you about halfway along the scrambly part of Shoshoni’s NW ridge. (It’d be interesting to do the ridge from its starting point further down the Cascade Creek Valley, but also the upclimb was fun so it’s a tradeoff I guess). In curious mode, first headed right/NW along the ridge heading up and over or around various ridge bumps until the interesting stuff was over. There was some fun class 3 in here. Also, this part of the ridge had absolutely insane views over the Lone Eagle Cirque, probably some of the best you could get anywhere. You’re directly across the cirque from LEP and can see the whole thing from the Chessmen to Iroquois/Limbo to Cherokee as well as the star LEP itself. Just beautiful.

I then doubled back along the ridge towards Shoshoni, through the same stuff as before and then through a fun section that involved traversing on ledges on the W side until finding a nice notch to cut back on to the E. I bypassed a few towers that looked like class 5 affairs (you could probably get into some very spicy stuff on this ridge if comfortable with class 5 scrambling) before hitting the ridge highpoint. After the highpoint was a class 3 downclimb into an E side bypass of a really jagged section, then the final climb up to Shoshoni’s flatter summit plateau. The main part of the final climb looked to be a loose gully, but I found a cl 3 rib to the right that bypassed the looseness and added a last bit of fun.

Upon reaching Shoshoni’s summit plateau the interesting bits faded and it was a simple climb up to the final summit block of Shoshoni, then back over via the standard route to Pawnee Pass. After frequent sidequesting to climb random stuff and stopping to stare at LE Cirque, I hit the summit of Shoshoni at 11:30am and was back to Pawnee Pass by 12:30pm (with a break on the top of Shoshoni), though I reckon you could do the loop from Pawnee in about half that time.

Part III – Skimming

Returning to Pawnee Pass meant a reunion with the ski gear, and time to go skim hunting. Getting to the skim involved an up-and-over of Pawnee Peak. Already on 4k+ vert for the day, my legs were not big fans of the short 400 vert up to Pawnee Peak, but we powered through and made it up the final peak of the day. Beginning a careful descent down to the Pawnee-Toll saddle (trying and failing to avoid banging ski tails on rocks), the target snowfield came into view. Sure enough, a pool of teal-colored water and a nice looking run-in awaited at the bottom! Having just skied the Fountain of Youth in CA about a month earlier, this felt like a junior version – smaller pond, but equally cool setting. Does that mean the IPW is as cool as the Sierra?

Firmly over walking at this point, I strapped on skis at the top of the snowfield and skied a suncuppy descent down. I fiddled with various run-in options and smoothing them out with short descents before riding a few skims across a shorter section of the tarn. It’s such a cool feeling. The run-in was far worse than FOY or the A basin skim due to not having any ski tracks cut into it already, but still a really fun time. Were I to come back, I’d definitely bring a shovel and a group to cut a nicer run-in and make longer skims possible.

While the perfect forecast was holding, it was 3:45pm and the majority of the descent was still ahead, so it was high time to leave. As luck would have it, even in August there was enough snow left in a nice chute that cut off a chunk of the decent. After some recon to make sure it went, I let her rip on a final bit of chute skiing for the year. Great corn skiing as well, in August!!

The end of the chute brought a rock hop to a couple more shorter snowfield skis, which with more rock hopping led to a small tarn above Blue Lake. After negotiating the side of the tarn and linking back up with the upper Blue Lake trail, I took the lower bits of the trail down to Blue Lake. Blue Lake meant meeting up with the first crowds of people I’d seen all day, which brought a few “why the heck do you have skis on?” comments.

After Blue Lake was the standard (yet especially grueling given the day’s work) descent back to Brainard Lake, where I reached the car at 6:30pm and promptly collapsed. I’d ripped my bag and exhausted my legs carrying resort skis 15 miles in the backcountry, but with a scramble and a skim it ended up being my favorite day out of the summer. The day ended with a burger in Ned, then straight to bed.

August 4 – Apache-Navajo-Niwot

• Mileage: 13.4
• Vert: 3,400
• Class: 4 (Apache-Navajo), 3 (Niwot)

Great beta already exists on this route, so this will mostly just serve to add in my thoughts on it and won’t detail out too much more.

Pt I – Approach and Apache East Ledges

With another decent weather forecast, I got a later start than the day before around 4:30am. The trail to Lake Isabelle went by much faster without skis on, though getting all the way up to the start of Apache’s East ledges was longer distance and time than expected. The rock hop over from the Isabelle Glacier to the start of the ledges required some creativity to avoid snowfields, but was otherwise uneventful.

The East Ledges sucked, no two ways about it. The first part could be made into more fun class 3, but then it was just a talus and scree slog 800 feet to Apache’s summit ridge. I tagged Apache’s summit at around 8:45am.

Pt II – Apache-Navajo and Navajo-Niwot-Niwot E ridge

Starting toward Navajo from Apache, the view is a bit daunting with Navajo’s sheer NW face being the main thing you see of the mountain. Navajo is one of my favorite peaks to look at, it’s pointy summit block is just so cool. The descent from Apache to the saddle went without much drama, standard class 3 fare. Same for the ledge to the W gully, which looks very exposed from afar but doesn’t feel so while on it. W gully felt class 4 with a bit of looseness thrown in for good measure, but isn’t too long or exposed. Before long I was on the summit of Navajo with good weather and views.

I worked over to Niwot via the E chimney and talus. When I first moved out to CO, I remember reading about airplane wreckage from a 1948 plane crash “hidden deep in the Rockies” and thinking “wow that’s cool. I’ll probably never see it but cool”. It was pretty sweet to come full circle and see the wreckage looking down Airplane Gully; now the snob in me says “deep in the Rockies” should be reserved for places in like the Weminuche but oh well.

Niwot’s E Ridge was the best part of the day, though the actual scrambly bits were shorter than I’d hoped. The coolest part was finding a ledge traverse around the middle tower on the north side. It’s basically level to you when you’re at the saddle of the ridge and ascends up and around the tower; turning right up a blocky scramble brought me back close to the ridge on the other side of the tower. A bit more scrambling and the crux of the route (3+) brought me to the final tower on the ridge with the big cairn. I’d previously done the remaining part of the ridge on a failed attempt at Niwot/Navajo earlier in the summer, so I quickly dispatched the remaining route past some cool domino rocks in the process. Once back on flat land, it was an uneventful deproach back to Brainard Lake via a nap in the high meadow next to a stream (I’d run out of water on top of Niwot, so this was a welcome sight).

September 14-15 – Blackfoot E Ridge

• Mileage: 18.9
• Vert: 4,200
• Class: 3 (5 to stay ridge proper)

Pt I – Pack in and camp at Cascade Creek

Blackfoot’s E Ridge was a true Gaia GPS find. While scrolling around various ridges of the IPW, I spotted this sharp looking ridge that had precisely zero beta but seemed to have enough red and not so much dark purple on the slope angle map to make it doable. I’d had success with a similar find in Shoshoni’s NW Ridge earlier in the summer, so I was really excited to give this guy a go before the summer was over. Plus after seeing the Lone Eagle Cirque from above on Shoshoni’s NW Ridge, I was enthralled by the idea of camping in it (spoiler – it far exceeded expectations).

After a morning climbing Lead Mt’s N Ridge, I refueled in Granby and hit the trail from Monarch Lake at around 4:15pm. Not much to say about the approach, except that it’s rather long (nearly 7 miles to my campsite in Cascade Creek a bit before the Pawnee Pass trail junction) and has a couple cool waterfalls. The IPW west side approaches are beefy!

Just before the Pawnee Pass trail junction, I found a great campsite with views of Lone Eagle Peak. I made it just after 7pm, just in time to see alpenglow on Apache behind Lone Eagle at sunset. The Lone Eagle cirque is just as beautiful from below as from above; to me this is one of the most beautiful places in Colorado and pretty unbeatable as far as backpacking spots go. I really want to get back there again and make it up to Mirror and Crater lakes, it’s just so gorgeous.

Pt II – Blackfoot and pack out

A desire to be back in Denver by mid-afternoon merited an early start to summit Blackfoot and pack out. Starting at 6:15am, I hiked up the Pawnee Pass trail up to 10,800 – uneventful, but with more great views of the LE cirque. An easy creek crossing kicked off the bushwack up to Blackfoot’s E Ridge, largely easy thanks to a couple grassy gullies and not-too-pervasive undergrowth.

The best bit of scrambling on the day was the climb from the upper basin to the ridge and the first part of the ridge. It’s mostly choose-your-own-adventure up to the ridge, and I made my way up via some fun class 3 chimneys and blocks. The first bit of the ridge didn’t have any crazy towers, so I was able to stay ridge proper at easy class 3. Views to the LE cirque with Shoshoni’s NW Ridge remained cool, as did the other side into the Thunderbolt Creek basin.

Soon I arrived at what I figured would be the crux of the ridge based on the Gaia recon, two big towers. Gaia also indicated a bypass gully on the south side which I confirmed would go, so I had that in my back pocket. Made it a bit up the first tower before being greeted with an exposed class 4+/5 wall. This is where this ridge becomes way more fun if you don’t bat an eye at low class 5. For me, guess it’s gully time!

The gully bypass sort of sapped my desire to scramble. It was nothing bad, just a lot of grassy traversing. A bit of loose rock thrown in to make it even more fun. By the time I regained the ridge, I found myself wanting just a ridge-proper ridge run. Unfortunately, the ridge had other ideas. I was still ½ a mile from Blackfoot, with a number of towers between. These towers had a nasty habit of cliffing out which created a fair amount of backtracking and more bypassing, the last one being the worst. By the time I hit that last tower I was 3 hours into the ridge and very ready to be done. But once around that guy, it was a short hop to the summit. Blackfoot’s ridge and summit had awesome views, though I would say I liked Shoshoni’s ridge’s views better. It was a bit closer to the action of the LE cirque.

All told, it took me 4.5 hours from leaving the Pawnee Pass trail to summit Blackfoot – 1 hr to reach the ridge and 3.5 hours to run the ridge. The time taken on the ridge put me a little behind the pace I wanted to hit to get back to Denver, so I didn’t spend a ton of time on the summit and hoped for an easy descent. My descent was a set of two gullies off the SW of the peak mentioned in previous TRs. It began easy enough on grass but steepened and turned to talus in the 1^st gully, which persisted in the 2^nd gully. The bottom of the 2^nd gully was an annoying-ish bushwack through an aspen grove, but after about 10 mins of bushwacking I promptly dropped onto the cascade creek trail. I made it back to camp a little before 12pm, packed up and was back at Monarch Lake by 3pm. Time for food and back to Denver!

All in all, 3 solid outings in the IPW over the course of the summer and the IPW remains one of my go-to spots near Denver for scrambling and views. I’d say Shoshoni NW Ridge ranks in my favorite IPW scrambles for the variety of scrambling, views, and generally easy access from the east side; I’d do it again easily. Apache-Navajo-Niwot was a bit heavy on approach for the amount of scrambling you get, and Blackfoot was a good one-and-done though I’d pack in to Cascade Creek again in a heartbeat. Thanks for reading!