A guide to the best lesser-known alpine climbs in colorado

Often in the mountains, it’s the things you never expect that you remember the most. One summer, a friend and I had planned a traverse from Shoshoni Peak to Apache Peak in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, above Brainard Lake. This jagged ridge crest bristles with spires known as the Chessmen. We had no description of the traverse, but we knew friends who’d done it—we figured we’d climb over the chess pieces when we could and maneuver past them when we couldn’t.

It took us several hours to reach the start. We clambered easily over the first couple of chessmen and skirted the next few along ledges to the east. Until this point we hadn’t bothered with the rope, but near the low point of the ridge we discovered a 60-foot spindle of granite poised over a 1,200-foot drop to the west, like a missile ready to launch. I’d never even heard of this spire, which is hidden from view from the east, but it simply begged to be climbed.

Full Sail: Josh and Amanda Smith climbing the Prow, Kit Carson Arete, Crestone, Colorado.

The climbing was a cinch, about 5.6, but the exposure was breathtaking, and neither of us dared stand on the pinpoint summit. To descend, we draped a shoulder-length sling around the top and rappelled back to the ridge, where billowing thunderheads chased us down a gully toward Isabelle Glacier.

We hadn’t finished the traverse, but we were completely satisfied with our wispy little spire, one of the coolest I’ve ever climbed. We called it Unimpotent Pinnacle, pronounced Un-im-POH-tent, a weak bit of wordplay for a phallic formation that was clearly unimportant in the climbing world. (Perhaps we were inspired by the name of another tower nearby: Dicker’s Peck.) A decade later, our little pinnacle was written up on the Mountain Project website as the Bishop’s Scepter. The sling we’d left on top had been snatched away by the Indian Peaks winds, so there was no way these folks could know we’d been there before. Someone had probably been there before us, too.

That’s the cool thing about Colorado’s lesser-known mountain routes: There’s often more mystery on these climbs than you’ll find on the more-documented and overtraveled routes of Rocky Mountain National Park. The rock may not be as solid and the lichen may be thicker, but there’s still the potential for real surprises. And that doesn’t seem unimportant at all.

the prow
In the Sangre de Cristo Range, the famed Ellingwood Ledges route on Crestone Needle draws the crowds, thanks to its listing in Fifty Classic Climbs of North America. But Kit Carson Peak’s knife-edge south ridge, which rises more than 1,000 feet on the opposite side of the range, is a much better climb—it’s the best technical summit route on any Colorado 14er besides Longs Peak. The exposed, narrow ridge is peppered with conglomerate knobs, and after a short 5.8 headwall near the start the climbing is 5.6 or less. But this is no beginners’ route: There’s a stiff approach (notorious for mosquitoes), and the leader must be prepared for big run-outs between protection on the climb. Approach: Follow Spanish Creek above the town of Crestone, San Luis Valley Best Info: MountainProject.com, Crestone Peak USGS quad

wham ridge
Is this the best summit route on a Colorado 13er? It might be—it’s certainly the most elegant in appearance. The north ridge of 13,864-foot Vestal Peak in the San Juans’ Weminuche Wilderness arcs upward in a graceful 1,500-foot parabola that goes surprisingly easily. The crux is only about 5.4, and much of route is pleasant scrambling; experienced climbers may rope up for only a few pitches. Most of the climbing is foot-intensive slabbing on solid quartzite, and you’ll pop out right on the summit, with wonderful views up and down the Grenadier Range. Approach: Via Elk Creek from the Durango & Silverton railroad Best Info: Colorado’s Thirteeners (Roach-Roach), MountainProject.com

southeast buttress
The 6.5-mile approach from a trailhead near Lake Granby, far from the Front Range hordes, limits the traffic on Hiamovi Tower (12,220′). The granite is excellent by Indian Peaks standards, and the higher you get on this route of about eight pitches, the more you’ll feel you’re on a neglected classic. The route ascends three stacked buttresses, with big ledges in between, and it can be done at 5.4. However, if you’re comfortable at 5.7, don’t miss the excellent crack-climbing variations on the final two pitches. Approach: Roaring Fork Trail, Indian Peaks Wilderness  Best Info: Colorado’s Indian Peaks (Roach), MountainProject.com

the aprons
You can drive to Mt. Evans’ summit, but how much cooler is to get there via a rock climb? The Aprons are broad slabs like Boulder’s Flatirons, but they’re perched at nearly 14,000 feet on Evans’ northeast face, above Summit Lake. At least eight routes ascend the three main formations, with the best climbing concentrated on the Second Apron. Start early to avoid Evans’ notorious thunder-boomers. Approach: Mt. Evans Highway (Colorado Hwy. 5) Best Info: Front Range Crags (Hubbel; hard to find), MountainProject.com •
ALPINE CLIMBS

The Hardest 13ers
Colorado’s 14ers get all the press, but many of the 13ers have much harder climbing, despite their less imposing stature. Only 18 people (plus or minus, depending on who’s counting) have climbed all 584 of the ranked 13ers in Colorado. We surveyed list-finishers Dan Bereck, Teresa Gergen and Ken Nolan (plus gleaned tips from interviews with 13er finishers on FourteenerWorld.com) to get the consensus on Colorado’s toughest. One thing’s for sure: If you’re looking for a challenging peak, head to the San Juan Mountains.

lizard head
(13,113’)
Easily the toughest ranked 13er, Lizard Head is guarded not only by three technical pitches (5.8+) but also by horrendous rock. Not surprisingly, it’s been the final summit collected by more than one person on the 13er peakbaggers list.

dallas peak
(13,809’)
A complex scramble up the east face gains a fifth-class summit tower (5.0 to 5.2). Gerry Roach described the tiny top in a classic line in his Colorado’s Thirteeners guidebook: “The summit of Dallas is big enough for a Ping-Pong game—just don’t lunge for the ball.”

jagged mountain
(13,824’)
Remote, high, and rugged, Jagged’s summit route winds up ledges and chimneys (5.2 or so), and ice on the north face may complicate the ascent. Even if you’re comfortable free-soloing the ascent, a rope is very handy for getting back down.

We also asked the 13er baggers for their favorite peak out of all 584, and the most frequent answer was Coxcomb Peak (13,656’), near Wetterhorn Peak in the northern San Juans. The standard Southwest Chimney route has low fifth-class moves.

Beat the summer heat in town and climb in the high country

When Boulder Canyon granite burns your toes and bags of chalk won’t keep you from greasing off Rifle limestone, head for the mountains. Here’s a selection of Colorado’s best midsummer sport crags, from east to west. For up-to-date beta, search MountainProject.com.

Stone Age: Staying cool at Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park
Just inside the eastern boundary of Rocky Mountain National Park, a row of granite fins looms over Lily Lake like the spiny back of a stegosaur. The climbs on Big Ass Slab and the Dinosaur’s Foot are mostly moderate (5.6 to 5.10); harder routes line the Fin and the Blade. Most climbs get at least a half-day of shade, and with views dominated by the Diamond on Longs Peak, the ambience is alpine. Highway 7, 6 miles south of Estes Park.

Empire
Climbers and skiers whizzed by these crags for years before an astute few noticed the potential for multi-pitch sport routes south of Berthoud Pass. Goat Rock is roadside, but the best cliff is Ra, a vertical shield of fine-grained alpine granite, half an hour up the talus. Facing north at over 10,000 feet, Ra is no place to worship the sun. Bring warm clothes, a helmet and big guns for the excellent 5.10 to 5.12 routes. Highway 40, 3 miles north of Empire.

Haus Rock
Summit County’s best crag is a ginormous boulder on the flank of 11,803-foot Porcupine Peak, a few miles from Keystone. On one side is a slab with a dozen or so moderate climbs (5.6 to 5.10); the other side is an impressive overhanging plaque with a testy 5.12 called Crystal Ball. Both sides offer big fun in a small package. Montezuma Road, 1.5 miles from Highway 6.

God’s Crag
Way off the beaten track in the San Juan mountains, this pocketed volcanic cliff at over 10,000 feet is the playground of hard men and women—the best routes are 5.11 and up. The reward for sore fingers is some of Colorado’s best sport climbing and a remarkable setting beside a perpetual waterfall, with gorgeous views of the nearby 14ers. Henson Creek Road (CR 20), 7 miles west of Lake City.

A quest to climb 365 summits in 365 days boils down to bagging the most Roach Points and diffusing “feedback bombs” in the San Juans.

Like most Coloradans, Dave is a bit obsessive about his outdoor sports. A bit. Hobbled by shoulder surgery, he had recently switched from obsessing about rock climbing (a spreadsheet lists the 550 different routes he’s climbed at one favorite crag, Mt. Arapiles in Australia, despite living almost 9,000 miles away) to hiking. If that sounds like a step down, consider that between January and early September, he had climbed Mt. Sanitas, near his north Boulder home, 224 times. But that was just the start, he had also decided to hike the so-called “Centennial 13’ers,” the hundred highest peaks in Colorado. (He’d already done the 14’ers.) And now, I was along for the ride. Armed with Gerry Roach’s Colorado’s Thirteeners, Dave had plotted an arduous and complex route that would allow us to bag four of the necessary high 13’ers in the San Juans in a single long weekend.

At Roach’s Clip: Think you’re obsessed with getting out on the rock? Dave committed to tagging a summit every day for a year.

But by the time we’d boarded the Durango & Silverton Railroad toward Needleton, the trailhead for our foray, Dave had set a new goal for the year: He now planned to tag 365 summits in 365 days. (Duplicates, including his many Mt. Sanitas ascents, would count toward this total.) This was not unreasonable. He had already reached 245 peaks during the first 244 days of 2009.

Carefully studying the guidebook’s trail descriptions and maps, Dave found a natural ally and enabler in Roach, Colorado’s arch peak-bagger and most closely followed guidebook writer. After all, the Boulder resident was the second person to climb the Seven Summits—the high points of every continent—and he has climbed more than 1,500 named peaks in Colorado. (Roach’s wife and coauthor, Jennifer, was the eighth person to climb all 637 peaks topping 13,000 feet in the state.) Most remarkably, Roach is the only person in history to climb all 13 major peaks over 16,000 feet in North America. Along with familiar giants like Denali in Alaska and Orizaba in Mexico, that list includes obscure and difficult mountains like Bona and Sanford that few Americans have ever heard of, let alone climbed.

Unsurprisingly, Roach is as obsessive about the information in his guidebooks as he is about climbing—his pen is even mightier than his knees. The result is a devil’s brew of vital description and confounding extraneous data. And then there’s the Efferculty scale, a Roach synthesis that collates a climb’s approach, elevation gain, summit height and technical difficulty, runs the numbers through a mysterious formula, and generates a value expressed in R Points (because who would want to collect Roach points?). These range from the simple if strenuous Mt. Sanitas (26 points) to challenging Longs Peak via the Keyhole (376 points), and well beyond. We would earn 450 points for our climbs of Pigeon and Turret from Needleton, but that was just the start of Day Two of our trek. Our total Efferculty for the day would be off the charts.

From the summit of Pigeon Prak, Dave and I could see the spiny ridge of Jagged Mountain, which we hoped to climb the next day, etched against a hazy horizon. It looked a long ways off—ringed by 13’ers bristling with gray and orange granite buttresses, the Ruby Creek drainage is perhaps the wildest spot in Colorado. We descended to our packs and traversed around the south side of Pigeon to a high saddle, from which it was easy to climb 13,835-foot Turret Peak. I passed a lone mountain goat along the way, and the morning train from Durango whistled as I kicked up Turret’s final scree slopes.

Monitor and Animas.

Black clouds piled high as we climbed toward Ruby–No Name Pass to leave this magical valley. After an ill-advised detour, I lost Dave—he was far ahead. Fearful of the impending storm, I pushed as hard as I could to catch him, but when I crested the pass I discovered only his pack lying on the ground. I yelled and yelled, and finally I heard a shout from atop a neighboring peak. It was unnamed, unranked, but it would be the third mountain of the day on the P-365 program, and to Dave that meant it had to be climbed, despite lightning cracking over nearby summits.

“It definitely counts,” Dave exulted as he trotted down to the saddle and picked up his pack, the first pellets of sleet slapping into our parkas. “It even had a cairn on top.”

Dave and I huddled under a boulder below the far side of the pass as graupel and thunderclaps bounced off the towering east face of Monitor Peak and the Turret Needles. When we emerged, winter had enveloped the mountains. Dave, who had chosen to wear lightweight approach shoes, fell repeatedly as we descended icy tundra and talus and then whipped from tree-hold to tree-hold through a snow-covered forest. At the bottom we pushed through acres of storm-soaked willows to reach the faint No Name Trail. Then, sopping wet and ready to call it a day, we discovered that our tent poles had somehow come unhinged from Dave’s pack.

Sole Train: Catching a ride on the Durango & Silverton.

No rating scale, not even Roach’s comprehensive R Points for Efferculty, can address every subtlety of a wilderness adventure. Going ultra-light on this trip, we had carried only one-pound down sleeping bags and no spare clothes—now we had to find some shelter or we’d be in serious trouble. Roach described an abandoned miner’s cabin down the valley, but when we found it the roof was a patchwork of gaping holes. Inside, we strung up the tent like a tarp and began to dry our clothes, but we didn’t expect much sleep that night in our damp and flimsy bags. We were now a mile farther from Jagged Mountain than we’d planned, and Jagged was one of the toughest peaks in the state. Roach gave it 513 R Points from Needleton, but we’d approached it via two Centennial 13’ers, a pair of rugged passes, and a severe September storm. Were we approaching the mythical 1,000-point Efferculty barrier?

The indefatigable Dave.

We began the hike to Jagged Mountain just after dawn, leaving most of our gear at the cabin. The walls of Monitor and Animas glowed pink across the valley. The grass and brush underfoot was still wet, but only pockets of snow and graupel lingered on Jagged’s north face. This 500-foot-high rock wall crests in a spire at 13,824 feet. The route, rated about 5.2, ascends well-trodden grass hummocks and short granite boulder problems. We carried a 120-foot length of thin rope and a few pieces of protection, but the only time we belayed was when we got off-route and had to traverse a wet slab to regain the correct line.

On top we looked south to Sunlight, Windom and Eolus, the 14’ers we hoped to climb the next day, and beyond them to Jupiter Mountain, the final 13’er on our planned tour. Threatening clouds already obscured the sun, and so we hastily downclimbed and rappeled. By 1 p.m. we were back at the cabin. The day’s first storm had passed, but continuing along our planned route, over another 13,000-foot pass and into Chicago Basin, seemed out of the question. Before leaving home, I’d checked the National Weather Service’s in-depth report for the weekend, and the forecasters, pondering the aftermath of Hurricane Jimena, had predicted “convective feedback bombs” for southwestern Colorado. I had no idea what these were, but I was sure we didn’t want to be near them without a tent.

Dave wasn’t fazed by skipping Jupiter Peak. “I’ll get it someday,” he said. “Maybe I’ll start climbing all the other 13’ers, and then I’ll have to go back into Chicago Basin anyway.”

We packed up and walked down No Name Creek, following a clear but poorly maintained path. I counted 209 trees lying across the trail between the cabin and the Animas River, and that was before we reached the really bad stretch of blowdown in this wild forest. We pulled into Needleton just before dark and slept outside an old shed where we could take shelter if it rained. We’d catch the train in the morning.

ate that night, I jerked awake to find Dave standing beside my down-covered head. “Hey!” he hissed. “I’m going for Jupiter … It’s 3:37. I’ve got plenty of time.”

Our train would arrive at 11:32 in the morning. Jupiter Mountain was eight miles and more than a vertical mile above us—331 R Points, according to Roach. That’s some serious Efferculty, I thought as I rolled over in my bag. But you don’t get to P-365 by wasting a day. •

Dougald MacDonald lives in Louisville and publishes ColoradoMountainJournal.com.

Ed’s Note: At year-end, Dave had sucessfully averaged more than one peak a day, including 316 ascents of Mt. Sanitas. “It ended up at about 380,” he said. “I stopped counting every worthless little summit.”

Buggin' Out: Climate change is a major reason why the tiny, seemingly innocuous mountain pine beetle is decimating forests.

The invasion is here and it doesn’t look pretty. Most of the trees in 2 million acres of Colorado forests are dead or dying. Will the forest ever be the same?

Vince White-Petteruti had seen some messed-up trails in his years as a founding member of the Wilderness Volunteers, but seldom had he seen anything like the one along the Gore Range Trail in the summer of 2007. A sudden windstorm had knocked at least 400 trees across the trail, creating a tangle of trunks and branches 6 to 8 feet high, the kind of blowdown that foresters call jackstraw. The Volunteers had come to remove these trees, but power tools aren’t allowed in the Eagles Nest Wilderness Area, so the crew had to labor four days with crosscut and bow saws to reopen 4 miles of trail.

Only a small percentage of those toppled trees displayed the telltale red needles that betray the ravages of mountain pine beetle, but the Gore Range blowdown nonetheless presages problems that soon will face outdoor travelers across north-central Colorado. Beetle-infected lodgepole pines now cover nearly 2 million acres in the state—an area more than seven times the size of Rocky Mountain National Park—and within a few years those dead trees will start falling over in massive numbers, creating a nightmarish tangle of dead timber that will impact Colorado skiers, hikers, hunters, and other outdoor lovers in myriad ways for decades to come.

“That blowdown replicated what will be occurring in eight to 10 years once pine beetle trees end up falling down on top of each other,” White-Petteruti says. “Land managers are going to have to ask themselves: ‘Are we even going to bother to reopen some of these trails?’ ”

The Red Death

Colorado’s pine beetle epidemic began in 1996 and has spread like a ghost fire, killing trees throughout the north-central mountains. The destruction has been especially bad in the popular skiing, hiking and mountain biking areas around Summit County, Grand Lake and Steamboat Springs. Now, it’s moving onto the east side of the Front Range.
“The epidemic will last until the beetles run out of an adequate food supply that will sustain their high populations, or until we have sufficient cold temperatures to reduce the beetle populations,” explains Joe Duda, a supervisor at the Colorado State Forest Service.

Natural denizens of Colorado, mountain pine beetles have exploded in population because of recent warm winters (which failed to kill the larvae), extended drought conditions (which weakened trees that otherwise could fight off beetles with a toxic resin) and the decline of Colorado logging, coupled with consistent forest-fire suppression (which creates homogenous, mature stands of lodgepoles that make ideal beetle chow). The female pine beetles bore into the inner bark of mature lodgepole pines and lay their eggs, which develop into larvae; the beetles carry a fungus that blocks the flow of water and nutrients up the trunk, and the hungry larvae further damage the trees. An infected tree’s needles begin to turn red about a year after the beetle attack kills the tree. By then the beetles have already abandoned their dead or dying host. Young beetles invade fresh stands of lodgepole in an annual mass flight.

With neither the financial resources nor practical means to control the plague on a wide scale, foresters and landowners must let it run its course. In most places, control efforts have been limited to cutting down small stands of infected trees or spraying healthy trees to protect visual corridors and safeguard campgrounds. Rocky Mountain National Park, for example, has spent more than $800,000 since 2006 on beetle mitigation, yet it has scarcely touched the damaged trees in the backcountry, which comprises 95 percent of the park.
For most high-country residents and visitors, the immediate impact has been visual: The sight of vast mountainsides of “nevergreens” dismays tourists and locals alike. But the danger of falling trees to property and people is no idle threat: Last October, a beetle-killed tree fell on a forester just south of Grand Lake, killing the man. Two weeks earlier, another Grand County man was hit in the back by a falling tree as he walked down a road.

Mary Ann Chambers, public affairs officer for the Rocky Mountain Region Bark Beetle Incident Management Team of the U.S. Forest Service, says 911 miles of trails in the Medicine Bow-Routt, White River and Arapaho and Roosevelt national forests lie in beetle-affected areas. Forty percent of all roads in these forests are affected. Both trails and roads could be closed periodically because of hazardous trees; in some cases they may be closed indefinitely. Nearly 20 percent of all the developed acreage—mostly campgrounds and picnic areas—in these national forests may be closed or restricted as beetle-killed trees are cut down and trucked away.

Cost Cutting: Rocky Mountain National Park has spent $800,000 since 2006 fighting the beetles—to little avail.

Closed Out

In 2008, 32 campgrounds and picnic areas in three Colorado national forests were partially or completely closed. As the beetle-kill mitigation work continues this year, many campgrounds are expected to be completely or partially closed (see sidebar). In the last 12 months, 4,000 to 5,000 dead trees have been removed from Steamboat Lake, Pearl Lake, State Forest and Golden Gate Canyon state parks; another 6,000 trees are slated for removal this year. The work may inconvenience visitors and cause crowding at the campgrounds that are still open, but the biggest impact is likely to be the unfamiliar and mildly shocking sight of acres of clear-cuts in once-pristine state parks and national forests. And don’t forget a sunshade for that picnic table: There won’t be many trees to provide shade or shelter from gusty winds.

The U.S. Forest Service in Colorado has already received $5.6 million of federal economic stimulus money for the removal of hazardous trees—and much more money is expected soon. Some of the funds will be used to employ teams of workers from the Colorado Youth Conservation Corps to clear trees from campgrounds and trails.

It’s not just hikers and campers who will be affected by the beetle plague. Ski resorts in the north-central mountains are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to clear beetle-killed trees. Winter Park has removed thousands of affected trees from its slopes since 2004, and the cutting continues. At Steamboat, the glades are growing subtly thinner as trees are removed, and trails are widening. On the one hand, such thinning could make for more accessible tree skiing. But opening up slopes may increase wind’s negative impacts on snow and lifts, and skiers may perceive more crowding at their favorite resort when once-tight tree skiing becomes more accessible through thinned forests.

At Nordic skiing resorts, millions of red pine needles on the trails have wreaked havoc with waxed skis, and more snow is drifting onto trails, forcing frequent grooming. To deal with deadfall along their trails, dude ranches have begun outfitting wranglers with saws and axes along with their lariats. The Rocky Mountain Orienteering Club has had to revise its ultra-detailed map of the Frisco Peninsula because of new logging roads and cut-down trees near the Frisco Nordic Center. Sherry Litasi, president off the club, said orienteers may soon have to stop racing at Frisco altogether if authorities end up clear-cutting substantial swaths of forest. Tigiwon Road, the standard access for climbing 14,005-foot Mt. of the Holy Cross in the northern Sawatch Range, is expected to be closed for an entire summer, possibly in 2010, to remove dead trees lining the road. And mountaineers who rely on unmaintained “user trails” to reach seldom-climbed peaks may soon find the approach has become the crux of the climb.

A Burning Question

The biggest impacts on outdoor recreation are still to come. One is the danger of major forest fires from all those dead trees. This will come in two phases. The first is right now, as millions of trees filled with dead needles increase the risk of a fast-spreading “crown fire.” After the needles fall—two to three years after a tree dies—the fire risk eases substantially, and the presence or absence of drought and wind become the overriding factors, just as they are in a healthy forest. However, says Monique Rocca, a wildland fire science professor at CSU, “The fuels on the forest floor will accumulate through time as the trees die and eventually fall over.” Fires burning this kind of fuel spread slower than crown fires, says Rocca, but, on the other hand, the presence of so many downed trees will make it hard for firefighters to move through the woods.

Apart from fire, the biggest impact on outdoor recreation is going to be the skeletons of millions of dead trees—standing and fallen. Three to seven years after trees die, their bases will begin to rot and they’ll just fall over—much faster if a wind event like the one along the Gore Range Trail strikes. “Within 15 years, 90 percent of the mature lodgepole pines in affected forests will be blown down,” says Kurt Mackes, research scientist for the Colorado State Forest and a CSU forestry professor.

These dead trees will make life miserable for many wilderness visitors. “Wildlife viewing, hunting and general recreational access to the forest will be more difficult,” says Duda. “Many trails may be closed due to the risk of falling dead trees, and this condition will exist for many years. Once the dead trees fall, they will remain on the ground for several decades.”

And if maintaining the narrow corridors of hiking and mountain biking trails is going to be tough, imagine how difficult cross-country hiking and backcountry skiing will become, once logs are scattered everywhere at waist height. Fortunately, Colorado’s best skiing is often among higher-elevation spruce-fir forests that have not been impacted severely by insects, but lower-elevation slopes may be dangerous and difficult to ski in all but the deepest snow cover.

When entire forests are downed, profound but unpredictable effects on Colorado’s snowpack are likely. Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, says, “We have discussed the beetle kill issue, but have more questions than answers. Less forest will mean more avalanche slopes, and avalanche paths may widen and lengthen as dead trees are knocked over. However, if avalanche slopes are covered with downfall, this could actually increase the stability of the snow by increasing the surface roughness. It will vary from slope to slope.”

Seeing the Forest

The beetle kill is not all bad news. Once you get used to the color, the mountainsides in beetle country are still beautiful. “It looks like the changing of the seasons back East, with the difference that it doesn’t change back,” Mackes says. In many places, the views for hikers, mountain bikers, and skiers will be better than ever as lower-elevation forests thin out. And some wildlife species will benefit. “As canopy dies and recedes, moisture and sunlight will increase on the forest floor, adding forage for elk,” Mackes explains. “Other than access issues from blowdown, the [beetle kill] may provide a boon to hunting. It will really improve elk and mule deer habitat.”

And the trees eventually will come back. Employing the sort of ecology-in-action spin you hear after forest fires, Chambers says, “You have to look at it as an ecological happening. Although it’s heart-wrenching to watch the old trees die, the trees will grow back.” Absent a large fire, younger lodgepole trees and seedlings usually survive the beetle epidemic, and new growth is already appearing in many beetle-ravaged areas. Where there were pre-existing aspen root systems, aspen groves should flourish. Soon, golden hillsides in the autumn may replace green forests above many mountain towns.

State park and national forest campgrounds, as well as private landowners and ski resorts, have begun replanting trees in damaged woodlands. The Colorado state parks are planting about 4,000 seedlings in areas where trees were removed, including aspen, spruce, and other species. “We’re trying to kick-start forest health by planting multiple kinds of trees—this should help to create a diverse, multi-age forest in our campgrounds and will help us avoid the single-species forests that have been devastated by the pine beetle epidemic,” explains Matt Schultz, the state parks’ forest management coordinator.

On a wide scale, however, a healthy post-beetles forest—multiple tree ages and species—is only possible if forest management practices change. That might mean more logging and, in particular, allowing fires to burn in wilderness areas. “I see an opportunity to maybe manage our forests to avoid these occurrences in the future, but that would take political will that I’m not sure is there,” Mackes says. “I have a hard time imagining the community of Winter Park, for example, allowing large, uncontrolled fires to burn in their backyard.”

In the meantime, hikers, skiers, and other backcountry travelers will have to make do—or move on. “My guess is that people aren’t going to want to go backpacking or hiking on some of these lands, even if the trails are cleared,” says trail volunteer White-Petteruti. “They’re going to say, ‘Man, is this ugly. And one of these babies could fall down on me.’ They’ll be asking themselves: ‘Do I want to go backpacking here or go to Aspen or some other less-affected place?’ ”

As usual, Greg grimaces when I tuck a cell phone into the lid of my pack. “Do you need to check your stocks?” he chides. “Call your mommy?” This is just the mildly annoying banter of a longtime climbing partner, but then he says something that hits home: “I go into the backcountry to escape from all these phones, and here you go bringing one along.” True enough, I think, but you’re partly to blame.

Late winter, several years earlier, Greg had suggested an attempt on the central buttress of Taylor Peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. This 13,153-foot mountain looms above the Sky Pond cirque, and its east face is one of the biggest alpine walls in the park. The hike to Taylor’s summit along the Continental Divide is easy, but the direct route up the east face is rarely climbed, and neither one of us had heard of anyone doing it in winter.

We left the Glacier Gorge trailhead at 4 a.m. with heavy packs, crampons and two ice axes apiece, a 70-meter rope, pitons, cams, ice screws, food and water—and no phone. Seedlings were already poking through the warming soil in my garden at home, but crusty snow still coated the ground at 9,000 feet. We clicked into skis a few hundreds yards from the car and didn’t take them off until we had climbed above Sky Pond, four miles in and 2,500 feet higher.

Caching our skis, we cramponed up a snow gully with a short ice step, then traversed a broad snowfield below Taylor’s East Face to a boulder where we left our packs and extra food. It was 8 a.m. and already warm. We packed light for the climb: a few energy bars, a single water bottle. The route appeared to be straightforward snow climbing linked by short rock bands. We figured we’d be on top by mid-afternoon. The rock steps, however, required surprisingly difficult mixed climbing, ice tools and crampon points scraping for purchase in shallow fissures. And the ramps where we’d expected to move fast were laden with sugar snow—unconsolidated knee-deep crystals that were perilous and exhausting to plow through. As the day warmed, we nervously eyed the pillows of wet snow clinging to the rocks overhead. If they fell, we would be wiped off the face like scraps from a cutting board.

By late afternoon we had reached a sloping snow ledge below a final headwall. We were only 50 or 60 vertical feet from Taylor’s flat summit, but the face was plumb and there was no obvious line through it. We’d already been on the move for about 14 hours. Dull gray clouds filled the sky. We’d have to move fast if we wanted to top out before dark.

———-

Chris, my wife, was expecting my call any minute. When I’d described our plans for the day, I had told her we’d be home by early evening. We had invited friends over for dinner. No problem, I said. I’ll be home, showered and have plenty of time to help set up.

Coincidentally, our friends had already called to cancel the dinner plans, but as the evening stretched on, Chris’ annoyance turned to worry and then fear. Around 9 p.m. she called Greg’s wife, who said she wasn’t too worried; Greg often got home late. Unsatisfied, Chris called a friend, who in turn called Rocky Mountain National Park. After some back-and-forth with the dispatcher, a ranger said he would drive to the Glacier Gorge trailhead and see if my old Subaru was still there.

Some time later, the ranger called back and said he’d found my car at the lot, dusted with new snow that had begun to fall. The ranger had brushed off the window and seen a cell phone lying on the front seat. He said there was nothing else they could do until morning. If we hadn’t returned by then, they’d begin a search effort. This was reasonable, but it was not what Chris wanted to hear. A couple of hours later, she called our friend again, in tears, and he struggled to reassure her that Greg and I knew what we were doing, that, really, there probably was nothing to worry about.

———-

After nearly three hours of attempting various routes through the headwall, Greg traversed back to my belay stance and said dejectedly, “I don’t know, bud—I don’t think I can do it.” I studied the sloping ledge at our feet. It wouldn’t be difficult to stomp down the snow and arrange a bivouac. But we had little food, no water, no shelter and a storm was forecast to move in that night. I had to take a look for myself.

A line of broken granite flakes zigzagged up the vertical wall left of the belay. From the highest foothold, I stretched to the right and cammed the pick of one axe into a crack. With a sense of desperation, I swung onto the axe and, somewhat to my surprise, did not fall. It was now pitch dark. Above was a slot choked with wind-packed snow. Digging with my axe revealed more cracks, and I struggled upward a few feet until I could reach up into the snowy slot. As if a sluice gate had been thrown open, snow crashed down onto my head and shoulders, knocking my glasses to the side of my face. I pushed them back into place with one gloved hand and kept digging until I could heave my body up into the crack. A few yards higher, I swung my axes into the frozen turf on top of Taylor Peak and hauled onto the summit.

Throwing a loop of rope around a rock protruding from the tundra, I pulled in slack to belay Greg. It was after 10 p.m., and snowflakes had begun to drift through the still night. Despite this, I felt a flood of relief—now I was sure we would make it home. I just wished I could call Chris to tell her that.

———-

Over the past decade or so, cell phones have helped save many injured or lost climbers and hikers in Rocky Mountain National Park. When a man fell down the icy Lambs Slide gully on Longs Peak, impaling his neck with his own ice axe, the climbers who came to his aid discovered a phone in his pocket and called for medical assistance that saved his life. A rock climber who had badly broken his foot halfway up one of the crags of Lumpy Ridge called rescuers and was plucked from the cliff face that night, instead of having to suffer until morning.

But cell phones are not a lifeline. Batteries die and service is spotty in the backcountry. Often, one side of the line is clear while the other is mired in static. If you get through to 911, your call might end up in Estes Park or Greeley or even Cheyenne, and then get routed to the park’s dispatcher, and eventually to a ranger. Meanwhile, your bars may vanish. A hiker who got lost in the remote Mummy Range several years ago called rangers and described his general location, but then his calls stopped and it took searchers three more days to locate him.

Had we been in real trouble on Taylor Peak, a phone probably wouldn’t have been much help. Thanks to my wife, the rangers already knew where we were climbing. But that night a two-day snowstorm moved, and if we’d been hurt or unable to climb that final pitch, it easily could have taken rescuers several days to reach us from above. By then, it’s no exaggeration to say we might have been calling home only to say good-bye, as Rob Hall famously did from below the summit of Mt. Everest in 1996.

Like many climbers, Greg feels that cell phones are not only an intrusion in the backcountry, they’re also a crutch that may weaken one’s urge for self-preservation—the attribute that ultimately keeps mountaineers alive. He cites the time-honored climber’s code of personal responsibility and laments stories of hikers calling for helicopter rescues because they’re too tired to walk home by themselves. If we’d had a phone on Taylor Peak, he might say, would we have worked so hard to breach that final headwall, or would we have just called for help and then waited for a rescue?

And here’s another question: Where do you draw the line? If you’re going to carry a cell phone, why not a satellite phone, which can be more reliable in the backcountry? Shouldn’t you carry a personal locator beacon, with which searchers can be alerted that you are in trouble via satellite and begin a search to pinpoint your position? Or does erecting an electronic safety net erase the whole point of wilderness climbing, inviting the overcoddled, risk-averse world into the heart of the backcountry?

In principle I agree with Greg. I treasure wilderness climbing’s opportunities for the escape, for that energizing measure of risk. But there’s another factor: When I’m out there I know how things are going, good or bad, while my wife and friends at home can only wait and worry. After Taylor Peak, it feels irresponsible to leave my phone in the car. I don’t carry it so I can call for a rescue (though I certainly would if I needed help and could get a signal). I carry the phone so I can call my wife when things are going just fine, so I can say, “Don’t worry. I’ll be home soon.”

——

We coiled the rope, walked down Taylor’s northern slopes, and then turned to down-climb a steep couloir to the east, toward Sky Pond. At the base of the wall, I felt utterly drained. The adrenaline of the climb and those scary hours below the summit had faded; exhaustion had set in. It was after midnight and thick flakes swirled in the beams of our headlamps; we couldn’t see more than 30 feet.

The wet snow collapsed as we skied toward the car, and we fell over and over. Greg was far ahead as we skied over the frozen Loch. Less than a mile from the road, I decided to jettison my pack and those frustrating skis, and just post-hole toward the car. I could come back for the gear in the morning. But Greg was waiting near Glacier Knobs, and he said, “Don’t be silly, you’re not going to want to come back.”

We reached the car at 3:30 in the morning. I plugged my cold, dead phone into the cigarette lighter, and as we neared Estes Park a few bars lit up on the display. I punched our number and Chris answered sleepily. “It’s about time,” she said, cross but relieved. “Why didn’t you call?”

“I didn’t have my phone,” I said. But now I always do.

Dougald MacDonald is associate editor of The American Alpine Journal and author of The Mountain World