Happy winter and welcome back to another episode of my journey through climbing the Colorado Centennials! Generally, my winter seasons are devoted more to backcountry skiing and ice climbing, but as we all know by this point, Colorado’s 2025-2026 winter season was one of the driest and most disappointing we’ve seen in an incredibly long time. Riding the coattails of a couple of good early season snow storms, I was excited to shift gears for a few months, let mountain climbing take a backseat, and enjoy some variety (as well as sipping hot tea). However, as the doldrums of an extremely dry winter carried on, all hope for a reasonable skimo season this spring pretty much went out the door as did my overall mental state. Clinging onto the notion that we’d be just one more storm away from good ski conditions, I rigidly found myself diverting my attention from the Centennials, chasing the pipe dream that if I just wait a little bit longer things would get better. Spoiler alert: they didn’t. And in turn, I didn’t get into the mountains nearly as much as I would have liked to have this winter. Never have I been affected seasonally by the weather to this extent and it truly shows the narrow nature of using your mind so rigidly. While I was so preciously attached from taking a break from the Centennials this winter in hopes of great ice climbing/skiing, many a mountaineer in Colorado (while not generally happy with the snowfall levels) climbed A LOT this dry season due to much safer avy conditions, various trailheads and roads never actually closing, and overall far less snow slogging. That being said, the season wasn’t a complete wash for fun adventures: I’m still thankful I got in a decent amount of ice climbing at the park, my first ever backcountry yurt trip with friends, some easy ski days below tree line and a lot of nice rest and hibernation time while the days were short and darkness reigned. As the quest carries on, I never cease to continue to learn more and more about myself, my motivation and my own interface with the outdoors. The long and short of it is this: let go of your rigid expectations of what think you want to do and just get the heck out there and get after what’s good. Take ownership over what you CAN control and fuck the rest with total abandon! On that note, I hope you had a better winter than I and enjoy reading this short episode on my two short ascents during this unexpectedly dry season.
PRAY FOR SNOW!
And as always, stay safe and have fun out there!
My CalTopo Map: https://caltopo.com/m/KS1MKP5
12/29/25
Mount Buckskin (13,871′) – Mosquito – Northeast Slopes II – Class 2 – #76 Ranked, #70 Personal
5.4 miles / 2,667′ gain / 3 hours, 47 minutes / ★★
Solo
Additional Summits: Southeast Buckskin
“A Windy Farewell to the Mosquito/Tenmile Range”
After over a month in wait, I decided to finally pony up, abandon the precious notion of skiing Buckskin and just get the heck out there and finish up my final Centennial in the Mosquito/Tenmile. I knew for a fact that it’d go mostly dry so I was looking for a good weather window with low winds and decent temps and luckily, the Monday after Christmas was looking decent. So, Sunday evening I drove back to my same spot I had camped for DeCaLiBron last spring and set myself up for a cozy night in the car. Despite the forecast looking good, it was an extraordinarily cold night with absolutely howling winds that shook both my car and my soul for the ascent the next morning. Turns out, sometimes the forecast is wrong! No wonder I had the parking lot totally to myself…
The next morning, I reluctantly awoke at 4AM to get started, but the wind was still pure insanity. So I went back to bed and got up at 5AM… Then 6AM… Then 7AM… Okay, it was obviously not going to get any better so I finally mustered up the motivation to get cooking (inside the car mind you; certainly don’t recommend) and don every piece of warm clothing I had brought with me. By 8:30AM, I had waited long enough and finally braved the frigid winds as the first light of the day began to bathe the upper mountain walls. The first mile and a half, still in the shadow of the dawn, were brutally cold with the ridiculous wind chill and low temps, but I was here so I thought I might as well at least give it a try. Today was one of those days that was so cold and windy my ears felt like they were on fire and the tears of regret were literally freezing to my eyeballs. I lyingly told myself, if I could just get into where the sun was shining, I’d probably be warm enough and, to my surprise, that held pretty true, despite my low mental state. Once I arrived at the Kite Lake TH proper, I swapped into mountaineering boots and gaiters and started the short climb to the upper basin, which went mostly dry with very minimal post holing: finally, a win for the day and a little extra juice to get me to the top! From the upper basin, I followed the dry talus on the east ridge to the two different summits of Buckskin, making for one of my shortest days climbing a Centennial thus far. Honestly, I’d take any win I could get at this point. I didn’t stay long on summit and took virtually no pictures due to the extreme wind chill and got myself back to the car as fast as I could. On my way down, I descended in a loop going down the face near Democrat then followed the power lines back to the road. On a positive note, it was so satisfying to come back this area and take in the views of the various peaks I had climbed last spring. Additionally, any day you don’t have to rock snowshoes all the way out there during calendar winter is a win for me! Overall, today was quite memorable mostly due to the heinous wind conditions, but as Primus once proudly said:
“They Can’t All Be Zingers!”
1/3/26
Mount Columbia – (14,075′) – Sawatch – Southeast Ridge II – Class 2 – #34 Ranked, #71 Personal
12.15 miles / 5,666′ gain / 7 hours, 58 minutes / ★★★
Solo
Additional Summits: Pt. 12042, Pt. 13298, Pt. 13544
“The Ridge that Keeps on Going and Going!”
Happy New Year! or not… The prolonged fall conditions continued to carry on and on… It hadn’t snowed since Thanksgiving! Initially, I was pretty bummed on this (especially since it was the new year and I had still yet to be on my skis, not to mention the larger, looming existential dread of climate change in general) but in hindsight, I’m was pleased there was still a lot of great hiking conditions in the mountains, so I decided to get back out there and go climb. The mountains still looked as though they do in fall: low snow mostly on northern aspects below tree line and collecting in wind drifts. The weather was looking good this Friday through Sunday, so I set off Saturday morning from my home in the SLV and got started from the Harvard Lakes TH around 7:15AM. It had been a while since I got to start from home and forgot how nice it is to drink coffee, poop in your own toilet, and not be freezing your balls of trying to get dressed in a car or tent.
From the TH, the southeast ridge route on Columbia follows the Colorado Trail for a half mile before bushwhacking up the ridge proper. The first bit was easy and dry but the thrash up the ridge below tree line was filled with deeper, unconsolidated snow resulting in a lot of post holing and general swearing. Atop Point 12042 I donned the snowshoes, dropped my additional layers, and changed out my disgustingly wet socks before setting off onto the long ridge connecting my current position to the top of Columbia. Luckily, the weather was great and helped put me in a positive, can-do mindset for the 5000+ feet of gain today. The southeast ridge on Columbia is right up my alley for what I like to climb: an absolutely panoramic alpine ridge walk that just seems to go on and on and on as you summit additional points. Overall, the route didn’t feature anything truly striking in terms of features, but the views alone of both Harvard and Bear Lakes were tremendous so I stayed on summit for longer than usual to soak up the sun on this bluebird, windless winter day. Overall, I could not have asked for a better calendar winter 14er ascent, despite the incredibly odd nature of wearing trail runners all the way to the summit in January.
And there we have it: two additional winter Centennials in the books! Unsurprisingly, winter conditions never got any better. Temps stayed high, ice virtually never formed and the snow storms were pretty much all complete busts. Unfortunately, the rest of my winter went a little something like this: drive up a mountain pass in the morning in hopes of finding some pow, be disappointed by the general lack of anything to ski, sigh, then subsequently drive home or go do something else I wasn’t nearly as jazzed on. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it wouldn’t be until early April until I was atop another Centennial once again. Luckily, I still had a decently fun winter season by pivoting to a lot more hiking, thus finally fulfilling my loose goal of hitting 100 summits (not exclusively Centennials) in a calendar year from the 2025 spring equinox to 2026 spring equinox. Backpacking in the dunes, skiing around Wolf Creek Pass (always decent snow), and finishing up on an ice climbing guidebook I’d been writing for a the last few years helped soften the blow of a shit winter a little bit, but I could tell my soul was restless for some more time in the alpine. In hindsight, a winter hibernation was probably not the worst thing in the world considering the amount of effort that I had put forward the previous 10 months of the quest, but come spring of 2026, the beast inside was roaring louder than ever, foaming at the mouth to be unleashed into the high peaks once again. And on that note, I hope you enjoyed the journey with me through this killer 2025 and hope you come back for more as we move into a, hopefully even more killer (fingers crossed!!), spring and following 2026 climbing season.
Have fun, stay safe, and get the heck out there!
Download GPX file used in this map
