5/8/04 – Mount Hope & Quail Mountain – East Ridge, West Ridge

7.0 miles, 4900'


I was completely wound up over the prospect of leaving Broomfield in the middle of the night for a climb. It meant to me the return of the routine. The summer season was here!

Well, spring more than anything, but the prospect of climbing once again in warm weather and long days had me in the summer mood. I was also excited to take my new digital camera out into the mountains for the first time. We left the Sheep Gulch Trailhead at 6:30 under blue skies, alpenglow hitting the nearby peaks. The hike into Sheep Gulch is steep from the start, and we relished the opportunity to quickly gain elevation. We stopped for around 20 minutes during each of the first two hours – mostly for taking pictures, like this one of Cross Mountain, and getting used to my camera – but, thanks to the steep trail, we maintained 1000' an hour pace with ease.

Life is returning to the gulch, especially below the current snowline, which was at around 11,000'. We saw fresh shoots coming up from the ground and a startled grouse that flew noisily into a nearby tree. As we moved higher into the gulch, we saw a tree with a knobby top. I've never seen anything like this, but I can only assume it was a large, precariously perched nest. I'm still not sure how it doesn't just topple or fall off. Our views of peaks to the south were getting more impressive as we drew higher into the thinning forest, especially of the Three Apostles and Huron Peak. Level, low clouds that were west of us earlier in the morning were slowly passing us by directly overhead.

When we were planning for what was forecast to be a lovely spring Saturday, the main reason we selected Mount Hope was because, on May 16 of 2003 during our climb of Mounts Belford and Oxford, we had witnessed a hilarious and bizarre ritual of nature: ptarmigan mating season. We didn't truly expect lightning to strike twice, as it were, because we figured mating season to be a short event in the alpine bird's yearly cycle, but we chose neighboring Hope just in case. Ptarmigan mating season is an opportunity to witness this reserved bird – usually content to lay in wait, relying on their camouflaged feathers, while you or other potential threats walk by oblivious – in rare form. The males fly and glide around almost incessantly, making a distinctive series of calls while divebombing and chasing females. It's quite the sight. If you catch them during this time of year, it's the ptarmigans who are seemingly unaware of your presence.

Well, lightning did strike twice. There weren't as many birds around, so maybe this was the tail end of the season, but as we passed treeline, I heard a sound I hadn't heard in a year. After calling Erin's attention to the noise, we started to look for the source. We saw a male chasing a female noisily through some willows. Just then a different bird flew overhead, quite literally buzzing us before landing in a patch of grass. I used my new camera to take a movie of the bird, mostly to record its calls (click here to download an audio clip from these "sessions"). We listened as this bird tried in vain to attract a mate for a good ten minutes. With my zoom, I took a couple (1, 2) of cool shots while we enjoyed the sights and sounds. We could have watched these birds all day, but we had some peaks to climb! Our view of Mount Hope opened up after we left the ptarmigans and drew us on.

The snow had been firm for us throughout the morning, but there were some deep posthole tracks – oddly, facing uphill – left by a pair of climbers the day before, according to the register. Had the snow softened earlier on Friday without a morning cloud cover, or had they taken a later start? Since I bring up these climbers, they were a daring pair. Despite the soft snow, we could see they had elected to take a glissade running from the summit ridge into the east-facing bowl between Hope's east and southeast ridges. After several hundred feet, they traversed and then took another lengthy glissade before traversing toward Hope Pass and back to the trail. As we were to see later in the day, they had tempted fate on Hope's steep slopes.

We reached Hope Pass and our views of Mount Elbert, the Gore Range, the Tenmiles, and the Mosquitoes opened before us. With the sun now out, we slathered on sunscreen. I didn't wish to repeat my mistake on Mount Lady Washington, when the reflecting snow burnt the underside of my nose so badly it blistered. Around 1400' separated us from Hope's summit, and the ridge between us didn't look as easy as I had been expecting. After a quick hundred feet or so, we found ourselves on a knife-edge of sorts. I assume Roach intends for people to traverse to the side of this crest to maintain the class 2 rating he gives this route, but we took the enjoyable scramble along the crest. After this section, the ridge drops and then rears up again. Soon we were on some of the portions of the route that I had been eyeing warily from the pass. Small broken cliffs make up the ridge here, and we scrambled up and through them. We tried to keep the difficulty low, but not to the point of taking making major detours. Consequently, much of our climb through this section consisted of third-class. Now past the difficulties, we peered down the exceptional couloir Roach calls "Hopeful". On snow, we climbed to the junction of Hope's east and southeast ridges and strolled to the summit.

We had spent a significant amount of time climbing the ridge, so we took an abbreviated summit stay, leaving at 11:00. We found less difficult ways to descend the ridge, though we still had two or three sections of lower third class to downclimb. The descent was tedious with the snow rapidly turning to slush. We took great care with every step, because there are a lot of places where a slip would be very undesirable. We were finally back at the pass at 12:30.

We took a few minutes at the pass before starting up Quail Mountain. Quail isn't the least strenuous add-on, demanding a full 921' from the pass. But its west ridge was mostly dry, making for a swift ascent. We reached the summit cabin at 1:05, with a fine view of the Buffalo Peaks and a great perspective looking back on Hope. We were back at the pass at 1:35 and ready to begin postholing hell. Actually, it wasn't all that bad, but it was steady, intermittent (if that makes any sense at all...) postholing the whole way to 11,000'.

As we neared treeline, I noticed that a great number of wet slab avalanches had occurred on east and northeast facing aspects of Hope's southeast (1, 2) and south ridges (1, 2). It was an awing sight, and I found myself wishing I had been able to watch them all slide.

We reached the trailhead just after 3:00, and even though we had aching knees from the stiff descent, we couldn't have been happier. Mount Hope and Quail Mountain were a demanding but very rewarding way to kick off the summer. Along the drive south to Johnson Village for lunch at Coyote Cantina, we couldn't help but be impressed with the amount of snow on the Sawatch peaks. They stood in stark contrast to their appearance the last two Mays. Hopefully all the snow we received in April will help out with fire season this year!