Blanca Peak - 14,345 ft

Date:  5-22-2005

Climbers: George Barnes and MarkDB

Route:  Northwest Face III, Class 2

RT distance:  13.5 miles (from the truck)

RT time: 5 hours 30 minutes (from Camp 2)

Time to summit from Camp 2:   3 hours 30 minutes

Time on summit:  10 minutes

Time to Camp 2:  1 hour 50 minutes

Elevation gain:  5,600 feet

Coordinates of TH:  33.054,-105,33.570

Coordinates of summit:  34.666,-105,29.134

USGS Quadrangles:  Blanca Peak
 

Trip Report:

First, the beta:

The Lake Como Road is free of snow all the way to the 4WD parking lot.  The road is effectively blocked by snow drifts soon after the parking area and is largely snow covered above 11,000 ft.  Snow shoes were extremely helpful for reaching the lake.

Mark and I met at the Lake Como 2WD parking shortly after noon on the 20th.  From here we loaded up his truck and proceeded up the road.  The road lived up to it's reputation for being Colorado's toughest road, and when we reached 8,800 feet Mark decided he'd rather walk than beat up his new Tacoma.  The day was blisteringly hot so I decided to backpack wearing only a pair of shorts and my cowboy hat.

We're loaded for camping and climbing in all weather conditions, so consequently our packs are pretty heavy.  I'm also carrying a rope and tech gear with intentions of doing Little Bear.  The heat of the day and rough road make for pretty slow going.  We stop to enjoy every shaded stretch we come across.  Not far past the 4WD parking we reached the "mother of all stream crossings".  Forty feet of fast moving ice cold water made life interesting.  I was glad I'd carried my Chaco's, and didn't envy Mark as he waded through barefoot with his large pack.

Above the crossing conditions are pretty wet, with snowmelt running right down the road.  Snow soon covers the road and we don snow shoes and gaiters.  This is the first time I can recall wearing snowshoes with shorts!  Upon reaching Lake Como we're greeted with snow as far as we can see.  A little scouting yields a patch of dry ground just big enough for both our tents.  It's not exactly smooth or level, but I'm too tired to really care.

We decide that we're both feeling pretty whooped, and it might be best to take the 21st as a rest day.  Snow conditions for Little Bear don't look favorable, so we don't feel too bad about nixing the climb.  The lower couloir for LB is full of avy debris, though we could see tracks from someone's recent ascent.  Instead of climbing we explore up the valley and decide to move our camp up to 12,100 ft, near Blue Lakes.  This gives us a better campsite and a good position to begin a climb of Blanca.

The day is exceptionally warm, even at our high camp.  I throw my thermarest out on the snow and pass the time watching marmots and the fast melting snow approach our camp from above.

At 5 o'clock things really pick up, and we have a veritable river on top of the snow 20 feet from our camp.  We have to scrap our intended route up Blanca to avoid the new river.  A short reconnaissance hike shows a viable route up the north (left) side of the valley.  We decide to get an early alpine start to allow us to get up and down on hard frozen snow, and after a spectacular sunset we crawl into our tents with alarms set for 3 AM.

We hit the trail at 3:30 AM under the light of a full moon.  Upon reaching Crater Lake we cache our snow shoes and don crampons for the coming snow climb.  The snow is rock hard and we don't feel too nervous as we pick our way across several debris fields.  The climb up to the Blanca-Ellingwood saddle is steep, but just shallow enough for us to employ the French technique.  As the sun rises on the other side of the ridge it creates an impressive shadow of the Blanca massif over the western plains.

The summit is cold and windy, so we stay only long enough to get a few pictures.  The exposed traverse to Little Bear is impressive from our vantage on the summit.  We nix plans of running over to Ellingwood, mainly because the class 2 route is completely snow covered, the class 3 ridge looks fairly hairy, and it had taken us longer to get up Blanca than we thought.  We're also worried about breaking camp and getting out of the valley before the snow softens up or a new river forms.

After a long, icy glissade we're back to our camp and loading up for the trip out.  The hike out seems even longer than the hike in, but we're soon on our way to Buena Vista to tackle some Sawatch peaks.