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Finally bagging my nemesis - Pyramid Peak NE ridge
On July 12th 2009 a good friend of mine took me and a few of his friends up Pyramid. We unfortunately did not summit due to a spooked climber in the group and we all turned around together, around 13,200' or so when the standard route starts to really get rowdy. I was waiting to do this peak with my friend as he is a VERY experienced climber and has a lot of knowledge and experience on that mountain. He called me last week to say it was time, and we decided Monday would be the day, not realizing until later that it was exactly a year after our initial attempt. This climb rocked my world, and it felt great to bag it finally! I'll try to make this more of a current beta TR and not spoil it too much, but I don't think that is possible anyway.
Hiking begins: 4:30am
Summit: 9:30am
Leave summit 10:15am
Back to car at 2:00pm
I am a "slow but steady" hiker, not stopping a lot, maybe medium speed overall?? The weather was nice so we were not in a rush to get back down once we realized the weather would hold.
We started hiking around 4:30, and caught the first rays of the sun hitting the Bells and then Pyramid entering the ampitheater.
When we tried a year ago there was a fair amount of snow in the ampitheater, so I brought my axe and crampons in case, even though I had heard on here it probably wasn't necessary. I was glad to have the spikes for the first stretch, but at the top of the first snowfield, turning east towards the steep gully, I realized that this time, it would be more of a scree-hike up the pitch up to 13,000'.
Upon gaining the saddle around 13,000' we could see a lot of the final approach. I was pumped to finally get to try to tackle this again. Not a lot of photos on this stretch as I was pretty focused just on getting there.
The ledge
Happy on the summit. Gazing at the Maroon Bells and deciding that it was time to keep on doing the more challenging peaks right now!
On the way down I was so happy to have done Pyramid that I once again didn't really take any route photos, but we had the privilege of a beautiful mountain goat encounter with it's little one, and I took a lot of pics of that :-) I always dig running into them when on the mountain, we had a great one last year as well.
All around, this climb was absolutely freakin' awesome to me! I can't wait to do more of these ones! Maybe I'll even get to Capitol by the end of the summer, who knows....
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Crampons could be used a little on the lower stretch entering the ampitheater but is probably overkill, if I went back again this weekend I would most definitely leave the axe and crampons at home. Go get it!
...the goats were taking my path :D and Dancesatmoonrise, I only need Conundrum, but it sure would be cool to hit Castle a 2nd time and do the ridges from both sides! Conundrum -> Castle -> down via Castle's standard route. I don't think I'm really up to skiing the N Coulier this time of year, as rad as it was last early summer :lol:
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