8/9/05 – Mount Emma – East Face

3.8 miles, 2010'


Mount Emma is another peak Erin and I didn't plan on climbing during our wedding trip. After seeing her from Gilpin Peak on Sunday and again from Telluride the day after that, we were hooked. She and I had been out drinking in Ouray Monday night with my sister and a few of our friends who arrived in Ouray that evening. We didn't get to bed until late, so when the alarm rang at 4:00, we shut it off and immediately went back to sleep. After another hour or so, my repose becomes restless. I keep waking and contemplating getting my tired rear out of bed. At around 6:30, I step outside onto our Chipeta Sun Lodge room's patio, and the view of Corbett Peak and Whitehouse Mountain is finally enough to spur me into action. Enough of this sorry business! If we don't leave now we're going to miss our chance!

We pile our gear into Erin's 4Runner, and she drives us into Yankee Boy Basin. This time, near the old Sneffels townsite, we take the turn into Governor Basin. The road climbs steeply into the basin, and we find a good pullout between the switchbacks near 11,400'. Erin hears nature's call, so she ducks into the trees while I ready my gear. When she gets back, she's laughing. She says that some people must be camping nearby and that one of them had arisen to a full moon. I'm guessing a squatting woman with her pants down probably isn't what he expected to see when he got out for a morning walk! After that incident, we decide to keep driving further until we come across another good parking spot at 11,700' with Mount Emma commanding our attention across the basin. Not to be outshined, Gilpin Peak, too, makes an appearance, peeking up left of spectacular Stony Mountain.

The wildflowers in Governor Basin are as bountiful as those we had witnessed in Yankee Boy two days earlier. We hike the road past a large mine building and across the basin until we arrive at a switchback at 12,100' under the impressively toothy Saint Sophia Ridge. Here, we leave the confines of the road and hike up a small draw, trying our best to rock-hop and avoid tromping the dazzlingly diverse flowers. The draw leads to the flats east of Emma where our perspective on Saint Sophia is at its most beguiling. Proceeding toward Emma, we see a couple of ways to cut through a short rock band at the west end of the flats, but we choose to contour around to the right until the band mellows into a rocky slope pocked with columbine.

Garratt & Martin's book describes climbing Emma from Yankee Boy Basin, so we're on our own to find a route for the time being. A steep, grungy gully that leads to a saddle between Emma and its south summit appears to be our best option, but first we have to make an ascending traverse to enter it. This is probably the worst of the scree all day; every step of the traverse provides something to think about. Once we enter the gully itself, the rock, while still loose, becomes more stable.

Onward and upward, we make steady progress until we top out at the saddle, with Telluride not even three miles away but thousands of feet below. Now we hang a right and pass under towering, black masses of rock, steering our way toward Emma's main summit complex. After climbing over a weak spot in a minor ridge, we find our way into an alcove with quite the puzzle before us. Hmm... we're on the wrong side of things to truly follow Garratt & Martin's route. This one chimney looks like fun, though. I wedge myself in and ask Erin to wait while I scope things out. The climbing is tougher than I initially had expected, probably lower fifth-class, but I push through it. There's the summit, right over there! I call to Erin telling her to keep holding while I seek out an easier way up. I climb down a short wall, into a deep crack in the summit tower, and then back up the other side onto the level summit. This deep crack looks like third or fourth class – has to be the way to go, eh? I call again to Erin, but this time she can't hear me. So I climb down the crack, turn left, and climb up another little gully. From the crest of this gully, Erin can hear me again from around a corner, and she heads my way. Together at last, I lead the way to the base of the summit crack and Erin follows me up. She isn't too fond of the crack, and indeed, she does seem to be finding the looser junk in there that I must have avoided. At the top, we celebrate by gawking all around but especially toward Dallas Peak and Gilpin.

We both agree to start the descent soon after our arrival, with the clouds starting to look so ominous. No thunder or anything yet, but little do we know this is the vanguard of a storm that would pound Ouray and the surroundings for the rest of the week. Still plenty of time left for us to get down, though! Back down the crack, up the gully, and down the other side we go. We're moving swiftly away from the summit tower, and I'm distracted, feeling gleeful that we were able to pick our way up to Emma's summit and feeling comfortable on this Sneffels Range scree... too comfortable. Suddenly my feet shoot out from under me. I yelp loudly, and I hear Erin scream my name from above while everything seems to be happening both quickly and slowly. Mid-fall, without thinking, I spin myself around, and now I'm prone, sliding down the mountain feet first. Fingers, arms, elbows, knees, feet, anything I can dig into the fluid rocks passing rapidly beneath me. It's enough; I come to rest.

Ow... How far did I slide? Not too far... maybe fifteen, twenty feet? Oop, can't rise too quickly, I'm still at a rather precarious angle of repose on this grungy slope. I get up gingerly and move to stabler terrain. My thoughts turn to my stinging hands. Dirty, but how are they not cut up? I'm amazed. The mountain, however, is now host to some of my left forearm, and I can feel some scrapes on my chest and knees. I dust myself off, and now I see that I've stopped just short of a lingering, north-facing ice sheet. I shudder to think of how much further I'd have fallen if I had slid all the way to the ice. The ice is short, but it likely would have sped me, perhaps smashing me directly into a wall of rocks beyond it. Trying to get out of your impending marriage, Ryan? Now Erin's by my side and digging some bandages out of her pack for my arm. A little water from my platypus tidies things up a great deal, and Erin finishes the work.

We've barely left the summit, though, so it's time to get focused again and resume the downclimb. No more pictures for me today... well, maybe one more; Teakettle and Potosi look so nice over there. I consciously take things a lot slower down the mountain, the more sensible choice to begin with. I think back with shame on the slide. So stupid to get so careless! The mountains can punish you swiftly for such a lapse. The remaining descent goes by without incident, and at 11:20, little more than three hours after we left, we're back at the car just as some first sprinkles arrive from the incoming storm.

I think our adventure is over, but as we pass by the pullout where the camper saw Erin bare all that morning, a girl comes running down to the road and flags us down. She says she and her boyfriend were trying to leave that morning, but her Explorer wouldn't start up. We head on over to their vehicle, and she explains how the car's electrical components are still working, but the engine just won't turn over. My mind immediately flashes to tales I've heard of marmots chewing on rubbery parts of cars' underbellies. The young couple from Mesa State University gives the Explorer's starter a few more tries before they resign themselves to packing up and riding out with Erin and me. As the rain starts to come down harder, I think about how fortunate they are that we were climbing that day. No one else is up in Governor Basin today. The two of them would have faced a decent walk back to the Yankee Boy road, and by the time they'd have reached it, because of the storm it's possible there'd have been no one else left to help them get back to Ouray.

Finally their campsite is packed, and they climb into the 4Runner's back seat. Despite the rain, the roads aren't too bad yet, and Erin has no trouble escaping to Ouray before it really starts to pour. The morning mooning remains unspoken, but as we talk on the way back to town, we find some striking similarities between them and us. They, too, had met in college. The guy, like me, is from out of state, while the girl, like Erin, is a Colorado native. And just as my first camping trip in Colorado was ill-fated – back in 1999 on a trip with Erin's dad and uncle, Erin succumbed to a combination of hypoglycemia and altitude sickness in the Never Summers, compelling us to make a hasty retreat from Bowen Lake in the middle of the night – this was his first Colorado camping trip.

In Ouray, we offer to take them around town to see if they can find someone to fix their car, but they elect to be dropped off at the Best Western. We hope they won't be stuck in town too long – the girl has work the next day and the guy has a flight back to Washington to catch – but we weren't to see them again. Once we part ways, I think back to Erin's and my own miraculous rescue from the Puma Hills earlier that summer. Perhaps now our karmic debt is at least partially repaid.