5/3/03 – UN 11,762, McCurdy Mountain & Bison Peak – North Slopes, South Slopes, Southwest Ridge

17.0 miles, 5885 feet


What a difference a week makes! Kane reported conditions necessitating snowshoes near McCurdy a week ago, and given what I saw in February, our group had no reason to not go with that advice. And we ended up carrying snowshoes for 17 miles for nothing! :)

Dwight Sunwall, Gary Swing, Erin Burr, and I met up in Conifer dark and early at 3:30. Poor Kurt Traskos, who had really organized the trip, was stuck behind in Broomfield, the victim of 'user error'. We blazed over Kenosha Pass to make a 4:15 meet time with Steve Hunter who had made his way down from Breckenridge to meet us at the junction in Jefferson.

Driving down Tarryall Road was an adventure in avoiding potholes, as usual. That 25 miles is kind of mind-numbing (in the tedious way) in the dark. We dropped a car at the Ute Creek TH and then continued on to the Twin Eagles TH. For a slightly easier day, one can do the car shuttle that we did in reverse, as Roach describes in the LCW book, but I think since the impetus for the trip was to bag McCurdy, we selected Twin Eagles for our initial TH. We got started at 5:30 a.m.; it was just bright enough that we didn't need our headlamps.

We were an evenly paced group, all of us working along and up the Brookside-McCurdy trail in a tight bunch. I had suggested a detour to more closely view the natural arch that's featured in the LCW book. I guess my memory was poor, because that thing is far further from (and higher off) the trail than I remembered! No matter, we had plenty more of that fine, pink Pikes Peak granite to inspect that day.

We flew through the meadow between saddles at 10,740' and 10,900'. I remember this meadow from February as taking far longer to get through. But here in May the snow was quite nice, supporting our weight and allowing for quick passage.

By 8:30 a.m., we made it to the 10,900' saddle, the turnaround point for our group in February. McCurdy Park was again glorious. I love McCurdy Park Tower; I'll have to come back and try the walkup someday. It was time to keep moving, though. Like Kane, we couldn't find the trail from this point, and we had some postholing and bushwacking to deal with to reach the 11,420' saddle between McCurdy and UN 11,762. We took a brief break for our group to collect at the saddle, and then it was extra credit time.

UN 11,762 is the fifth tallest Tarryall and doesn't cost too much in elevation gain to attain. I'm glad I went because the summit contained a little extra surprise for us. We found the main summit easily and enjoyed our first view of Pikes that day. Like the Roaches say, it affords a unique view of McCurdy, too. I was intrigued by a freestanding subpeak near the main summit, and Gary and I ran over to explore. Tackling the subpeak from either side, neither of us saw a reasonable route up the boulders until I suggested to Gary that he peer in a hole that he was near. "That's it!" he exclaimed and he disappeared into the hole. Sure enough, the hole led up and through the middle of this formation straight to the top. We shouted to our climbing partners to join us for this unique scramble. We rated it as 3+, maybe easy class 4, but the moves are unexposed. We all heartily recommend this small side trip if you're already on UN 11,762. (Dwight has some great pictures from this trip posted in his photo archive. Check this picture for a shot of Gary and I standing on the subpeak). We sat atop this huge boulder for a few minutes before racing back down to the saddle with McCurdy.

The LCW book warns you that even though you're at this high saddle, you still have a ways to go before reaching McCurdy's summit, and this is no joke. We summitted UN 11,762 at 9:30, but we weren't to reach McCurdy's summit until a little after 12:00.

The Brookside-McCurdy trail was visible again on the saddle and we followed it around the base of McCurdy. Once you swing around to the west side of McCurdy's summit plateau, you are treated to formations that easily rival anything found on Bison Peak. Jagged ridges formed of that bubbly granite shoot wildly in many directions. Boulders and towers abound with such great frequency that they could easily afford a lifetime of rock climbing opportunities.

Because of the formations, however, it makes navigating McCurdy more of an adventure than your average mountain. The summit proper isn't visible from many places, and you wouldn't be able to distinguish it without prior experience anyway. We relied heavily on the route description and the topo map. After following the trail to the designated point, we turned and headed up a broad gully. It's hardly a gully; really just a flat area between ridgy formations. We took a left turn instead of a right turn higher in the gully because the formations on the left looked taller. We should have looked at the book first, because once we attained a ridge crest near what we thought could be the summit, we saw the true summit across the gully from us. We probably wouldn't have even noticed it if not for the large stick that someone placed on the summit. Steve Hunter dubbed the false summit that we climbed McIdiot :)

The summit of McCurdy was a windy place, so we descended 20 feet and tucked into an alcove for a lunch break. We still had much ground to cover, so we kept the lunch brief. We descended the gully quickly and rejoined the Brookside-McCurdy Trail. The trail takes you over McBison (the McCurdy-Bison saddle) and eventually to Bison Arm. We kept on losing and regaining the trail during this segment of our journey and we climbed a couple of small ridges that we could have avoided. Oh well! Bison grew larger and nearer more quickly than I had been expecting, so that was encouraging. Finally, we made it to Bison's south ridge. Dwight properly identified the Bison Peak Monolith, which had deceived me because we saw its broad side initially.

Climbing Bison was tough, as we had already ascended a mile in elevation and trodden 11 miles. We bumped into a group of climbers who had just summitted Bison. Maybe we should have personal "Hello! I'm with 14erWorld" stickers instead of just the bumper stickers because none of us thought to introduce ourselves. As it turns out, Jon Bradford was the group's leader and was the one who gave us advise on the descent from Bison. None of us had used the Ute Creek Trail before, so we weren't sure where to begin our descent after summitting Bison.

Bison's summit was equally windy, and I was the big wuss of the moment, spending only a brief minute on the summit before seeking shelter. 10 feet below, though, I was toasty and could hear the group's conversations better than I could on the summit itself.

Six miles left! We descended Bison and quickly made it to Bison Arm. But we didn't properly identify it as such, and spent fifteen minutes deliberating over where we should descend. Here, Dwight's GPS proved invaluable toward settling a debate. After making a bit of the descent, we picked up on Bradford & Co.'s tracks, and our routefinding was over.

After spending the day in Bison and McCurdy's wonderlands, the Ute Creek Trail was anti-climactic; I found this trail to be featureless in comparison! Despite our aching feet, we made it to the TH by 5:15, and we were happy to have completed the hike in under 12 hours.

What a grand day in the Lost Creek Wilderness! It was the longest day for Erin and I since at least September, so it was a fine test piece for the forthcoming season. We're leaning towards trying Belford next weekend. We'll see what happens!