Do you like choss, spicy 5.6 trad climbing, steep, uncomfortable, loose scree fields, and hyper-exposed ridge traversing with tricky route finding and difficult-to-protect 5th class moves? Then this is the route for you! If any one of these things frightens you, strongly consider staying away from this route until you have sufficient rock climbing and route finding experience built up. The name of this route as submitted on mountain project is "Chossinator" (
Chossinator). This route is not at all recommended for the faint of heart, for there is enough choss on the dangerous sections to warrant a proper code brown. You have been warned.
Begin at the Mill Creek trailhead (which is a different trailhead as shown on the trailheads section of 14ers.com, use these coordinates for the trailhead: 37.95418, -107.82927). Begin up the trail. Stay on the trail for 0.6 miles, and turn left at the junction. Follow the trail for another 1.8 miles to another junction and turn right onto the Sneffels Highline trail. Continue along the trail, following switchbacks through the trees and ascending up and around some cliffs on your right side for 2.4 miles (
1). After the cliffs, the trail roughly contours around some rolling ribs on the south flanks of the peak. There is a stream you must ford after a short downhill section near the cliffs. Here is a good spot to observe a large amount of the route ahead (
2). You will leave the trail and begin climbing up steep grass through some trees up the ridgeline in front of you once you reach about 2.4 miles after the previous junction. If you find yourself still on the trail and are able to look directly up the mountain to the looming, slightly overhanging, and enormous headwall of Dallas' south face AND you have a prominent rib covered in grass descending diagonally to your left, you have gone too far and have contoured around the ridge that you will follow to the upper mountain.
There are many ways up this next section, and nearly all of them involve steep, loose scree ranging from pebble-size to fist-size chunks of rock. Your goal now is to ascend the ridge till above the trees (
3), cross a shallow gully, then continue traversing west and slightly upwards until you are beneath some easy class 3 chimneys and the main headwall higher up (
4,
5). There will be cliffs underneath you for some time, which will slowly become bigger and eventually merge with the extremely confusing terrain that surrounds a large gully descending from the Dallas-West Dallas saddle. From here, begin hiking straight up to the headwall, navigating through the class 3 chimneys and ever looser and changing rock (
6). Note: you will be traversing for some time above cliffs on a steep, gravel/scree slope, and a serious tumble here would likely result in death.
After navigating through the class 3 chimneys, you will reach the base of the headwall (37.98531, -107.82752). There are numerous lines here, many look rather unprotectable, some look wicked difficult, and all look wildly loose and scary. The distinguishing feature of this face is a large dihedral in the middle of the face that splits the entire headwall in two. The 2 easiest looking lines to climb are found to the right of this feature.
There is a mini rib running out from the face, to the right of which lies one of the easy climbing lines and an increasingly steepening and blank face. On the left side of this rib is the select line of choice; there is a right facing dihedral with a couple cracks higher up, and a ledge protected from rockfall left of the dihedral around 20-25 feet above the ground. This is the belay ledge. Put harnesses on and rack up before scrambling to the belay ledge, then go up and left from the bottom of the route with class 4 moves until you are on the ledge. There is a crack in the corner of this ledge to build an anchor. From here, rope up and begin the fun pitch of climbing for this route (
7,
8,
9).
To reiterate the warnings at the beginning of this route description: this route is named Chossinator on mountainproject for a reason. The rock on this pitch is extremely loose and fractured, and there WILL be rockfall happening while climbing. Belay from the belay ledge described and not the ground as the belay ledge shelters the belayer well from rockfall, whereas the ground of this pitch does not.
Pitch 1 - 5.6 R, 80'
From the belay, scramble back down about 8 feet. Face climb 10 feet of hard to protect 5.4 - this section could be protected with a knifeblade piton. Place a #2 yellow Metolius in a flaring crack then move up delicately 6 feet for a good, small hand-size cam placement. 4 feet above this placement is a nice small ledge to take a break and plan the next moves. There is a short chimney with loose chockstones and a nice crack to the left of your waist. Place another small hand-sized cam here with a runner then move right 5 feet. The next 5-foot section is 5.6 R with a shallow, grungy crack and loose rock all around. Place a #3 Metolius cam here and commit to the move up and right that gets you to the low angle beehive-shaped dome. Once there, the climbing eases; however, there is no feasible gear. Continue up and right on the beehive as the angle eases with loose rock aplenty. You will reach a good wide ledge with large boulders and many places to build a safe belay (
20),
21).
Bring your 2nd up. From here, unrope but leave your harnesses on if you plan on using hip belays on the ridge traverse, which is highly recommended. Begin the mostly class 2 with some class 3 sections climb up the rib to the ridge. There is a relatively low angle, left-facing corner with some easy class 3 moves up ahead of you. You will aim for this feature and climb through/past it. After this, continue following the rib until you reach the ridge proper (
10,
11,
12).
Once on the ridge proper, you are nearly there. In fact you are only around 20 vertical feet and 400 horizontal feet from the true summit. However, this is not the end of the technical rock. You now have some spicy, dangerous, and fun ridge navigating to perform.
Walk along the ridge until you are faced with the first tower. The best, and perhaps only, way to go is to the left, down climbing the notch with some easy class 5 moves and perhaps some of the only solid rock on the entire mountain. Continue down on the left side of the ridge, making some class 4 moves, and eventually pop back onto the ridge proper, where you will be faced with the next crux (
13,
14,
15).
Here, if you want to rope up, this would be the place to do it. Rope up, do some hip belays for some assurance as you carefully make your way across this stretch. There is massive exposure on both sides of the ridge while pulling some low class 5 moves. Make sure you know how to do a proper hip belay before using this technique here, because if used incorrectly there can be deadly consequences for you and your partner.
Rope up, find the good hip belay spot, and climb one at a time through the next section. This is a spicy downclimb off this 2nd tower about 10 below the hip belay, with big exposure on both sides of the ridge and loose rock everywhere. Continue across the ridge, climb up the next tower, and find the next hip belay. Bring the 2nd across. There was no good place to put pro due to loose rock everywhere, but the technical moves stayed in the low class 5/class 4 range (
16,
17).
From here, there is only one more rope length left to reach the summit. Do another hip belay. The leader may be able to place 2 or 3 cams on this stretch, then the leader can find a good hip belay and bring the 2nd over. You are now at the summit! (
18,
19)
To get down, it is easiest to descend the usual rappel route off Dallas on the east side. Do 2 rappels off the summit, hike down the face directly down the fall line and locate a third rappel anchor. Rappel this and coil the rope but leave the harnesses on. Continue descending, and you may find a 4th rappel anchor. After this rappel, the rope work is over and the rope can be properly coiled and the harnesses stowed. Find and follow the trail down and around the mountain, passing under the huge impressive wall that is Dallas' South Face (
22.)
Eventually, cairns and trail disappears, and you are left picking your way down the dirt/scree into the grass. Continue hiking down following the gullies, and you will at long last reach the Sneffels Highline trail quite close to where you left it earlier that day. Follow this back to the car.
