Wetterhorn Peak, CO

Objective:  
Summit Wetterhorn Peak (14,015') (successful).
  
Date:  
July 15, 2004
Photogallery:  
Party:  
Robin Blume-Kohout and Mouser Williams
Summary:  
A bizzarely perfect trip from the Matterhorn Creek trailhead up the southeast ridge route. The weather cleared up just for our trip, raining before and after.
Route:  
From Los Alamos, NM, 502 to 30 to Espanola. 285 north to Alamosa, 160 west to South Fork, 149 north to Lake City. Followed the trailhead instructions in Roach. Drove all the way to the 4WD parking area along Matterhorn Creek. Hiked the standard southeast ridge route as described in Roach. Approximately 3,300' of gross gain and 7 miles round trip on foot.
Noteworthy:  
My forth fourteener.
My first class three route.
Lessons Learned:  
Sometimes everything goes just right.
Thursday, July 15
Immediately after work, Robin and I jumped into my truck and headed out. We stopped briefly at Quiznos for dinner and then got on with the 6 hour drive to the trailhead. The entire drive was characterized by distant lightning and rain. We never got near the lightning, but it was always visible.

We arrived at 11:30pm. Unlike our previous trips, this time there was a crowd. We passed about 10 trucks parked along the access road and there were 5 more trucks at the 4WD trailhead. We had to be very quiet setting up camp. Robin stayed in his bivy sack and I slept in the back of the pickup. There was light rain periodically throughout the night.

Friday, July 16
I woke up at 4:45am to the sounds of the guy in the truck next to me getting ready to go. By the time I was out of the truck, he was already making breakfast and two other hikers had just left. I got Robin up and made some oatmeal. We packed everything up and were on the trail by 5:45.

At this point, the ground was damp from the night's rain and there were still clouds everywhere. However, as the sun came up and the air started warming up, the clouds slowly disappated. By the time we broke through treeline, the clouds were all but gone, and there was no wind.

We made good time, averaging a little more than 1,000 feet of vertical gain per hour. When we got out from under ther shadow of Uncompahgre Peak and stopped to put our sunscreen on, we were passed by three hikers. This left six hikers and two dogs ahead of us.

The weather remained pleasant. There were a lot of wildflowers and very little snow. We only had to cross one short snow field just before gaining the southeast ridge.

The ridge goes quickly to class three scrambling which I found very enjoyable. The exposure didn't give me any trouble at all. The rock is solid and, although there was some pea gravel that made some footholds a bit shifty, I never felt unsafe. Four of the climbers ahead of us (and two dogs) passed us on their way down as we were negotiating this section.

The route to the base of the ship's prow is not clear, and there are many contradictory cairned trails. The one we followed took us way over to the right side of the ridge and below the ship's prow without seeing it. When we got to the summit block, we though it was the prow and we tried to skirt around it to the right as Roach suggests. Just then we saw one of the other climbers descending from the summit and coming over the ridge behind us. He cleared up our mistake for us and we backtracked about 50' to the ship's prow. We hadn't lost any appreciable altitude so it was not a big problem.

Once at the flat area at the base of the prow, we climbed through the notch and looked at the flat slab that Rob had warned us about. Dry and without wind, it was nothing to worry about, though with the 2000' dropoff at the far edge, it would certainly give me a moment of pause if it had been icy.

Beyond the slab, it is a quick 100' of very steep class 3 scrambling to the relatively small summit at 9:15am. The weather was still perfect. No wind, warm, and sunny. Doug, the guy who we had hung out with during breakfast, was at the summit talking on his cell phone. We sat down and had some food and enjoyed the view.

For the first time at this altitude, I brought enough food of sorts that I felt like eating at the summit. I was not hungry, nor did I get nauseus. The pudding cups and the mini-gatorades helped a lot, I think. For once I felt great at the summit and it made for a very pleasant experience.

While we were up there, another climber reached the top and the four of us hung out for about 45 minutes. After awhile, the clouds started coming back and were apparently growing into what would be a storm. So we started our descent. We made quick work of the class 3 section and had a pleasant hike down to the truck. Though the clouds continued to build, we didn't have a single drop of rain until we were at the truck and were taking off our boots at noon.

On the drive out, the weather deteriorated from a light sprinkle to a heavy downpour with lightning. Somehow the weather had cleared up just long enough for us to do our climb, and not a second longer. Perfect.

It took us just over 3 hours to ascend to the summit, just under two hours to descend, and we were home at Los Alamos by 6:00pm. This was my favorite mountaineering experience to date.
Written by Mouser Williams on 2004.07.18