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Oman and I met in Alamosa on Thursday and headed up the 4-wheeler playground known as Lake Como road. The road is nasty and even though I have a new jeep I chose to stop about a half mile from Jaws 1.
Anytime they name the hazards it's a good to pay attention. At Jaws to there is a memorial plate to someone who jeeped off the road. We arrived at Lake Como and camped just beyond the lake at a beautiful spot. It appeared we were going to have the mountain to ourselves so we started Friday morning at 6. The gully is 600 feet of mild scree and we followed Bill's instructions and had no problem reaching the notch. Looking down the gulley Snow below the hourglass
The route then traverses the right side of the ridge and is snow free all the way to just before the hourglass.
There are a few cairns and about half way across the hourglass comes into view. There was about 200 feet of snow just under the hourglass. At 9am this snow was still very hard and with crampons we could kick our front points in and safely ascend with an ice axe.
The narrow portion of the hourglass was snowfree but had running water down the center.
We chose to climb up the center and use the THREE fixed ropes as an occasional third point of contact. I felt this was safer than climbing the left side. I checked the anchors at the top and they were bomb proof. The rest of the route is filled with loose rock and route finding is a bit iffy. Most of the loose rocks that release funnel down through the hourglass. It would be a dangerous place to be with a
crowd. When Bill says "if you go left of the slope, do not go all the way to the left of the ridge" pay close attention. I didn't and climbed myself into a few class 5 moves and then had to down climb a few to get back on route. The final pitch to the summit was on pretty good rock and the view of Blanca, Ellingwood, and the famous connecting ridge was spectacular.
I took many pictures but my laptop crashed and living out of a jeep for a month isn't good for technical failures.
Now the fun begins - the descent. The down climb to the hourglass is very difficult to do without dislodging a few rocks. They rocket down and swing to the right into the narrower sections. When we reached the anchors we chose to rappel to the base of the hourglass. I believe it was safer than downclimbing wet class 4. The snow at the base of this section had softened enough to kickstep down without crampons.
Rocks were still coming down after we were out of the snowfield
The rest of the descent was a pleasant end to an exciting climb.
An early start will possible avoid any company but the snow will be very hard if you don't have crampons. An ice ax is critical.
That night DelSur and CoDave arrived and we had a nice chat with them. I hope they had good luck climbing on Saturday.
Sorry for the lack of pictures.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Skip, it was great to meet you and chat up at Lake Como. Hope to see you again some time.
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