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Assulting the Sangres was Tom and my goal for this week, so we got an early start on Monday from Denver. We made it 2.5 miles up the Lake Como Road, too many loose rocks for the Santa Fe. We met an amazing mexican that was harvesting pine nuts, thanks to Tom being fluent in Spanish we were able to learn how to obtain them. We set up camp on the SW side of lake Como and had just enough time to eat before the sun went down.
The full moon rose that night right near Little Bear‘s Summit a sign that we were to climb it the morrow.
We awoke to a very cold frosty morning.
Ellingwood point glowing in the sunrise.
Nice cairn pointing the way to the notch gully.
Little bear alit by the first warm rays.
We donned helmets and harnesses just in case and entered the gully, it was fairly solid on either side so we parrallel climbed it.
We ascended the ridge and got our first look at the talus leading to the Hourglass,
I dreamed so many times about Little Bear in fear and awe wondering if it would fall to us.
Tom scrambling across the Talus towards the Hourglass.
Heres a look at the base of the Hourglass we heard and saw multiple rocks fall and were happy to be the only ones on the route.
The ropes were encased in Ice and very wet so we climbed the solid class 4-5 rock to the left of the ancor.
Tom Scrambling up the final pitches towards the summit.
Another look down the Hourglass, nightmare food for sure.
Ellingwood Point and Blanca from the Summit of Little Bear.
Two Climbers happy to bag the "hardest" standard route.
It seemed much scarier to downclimb the Hourglass, Tom suggested we rapell and use all 5 ropes for backups just in case one broke.
He was kind enough to go first
Here‘s a look at the knot of ropes close up.
Check out the horn its all supported on except one rope that was secured further above.... eeek
The rappel wasnt so bad, there was some water and a bit of ice I imagine that after one more snow this would be a terrible place to be.
We easily climbed back down off the rock to the grass and celebrated conquering a real Mountain. I passed out right when we got back to camp and slept again that night like a rock. Ellingwood Point‘s SW ridge was our goal in the morning, continued in the next chapter...
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