Widow Maker

That's what Little Bear should be called!

We left Buena Vista Friday afternoon with the goal of climbing Little Bear and Blanca on Saturday and then Ellingwood on Sunday. It took us 1.5 hours to drive the 2.5 miles up the nationally recognized “Worst 4wd Road in Colorado”. We picked up a couple of hikers half way up the road and they were riding in the back of the truck. I looked back to see them getting thrown around like rag dolls. After riding in the truck for about ½ a mile they told us they were ready to get out…it was easier to walk than to be thrown around like that. After we drove as far as we could on the road, Ben and I backpacked up the trail until we reached Lake Como. It was a beautiful evening. Just before we reached the lake we could see the northwest face of Little Bear and we planned our route for the next morning. We started dinner and then set up camp while it was cooking. The picture below is a view of the lake from our campsite. As we got ready for bed we were filled with the anticipation of the next day's climb.
The alarm went off at 4:30 am and we crawled out of our sleeping bags and strapped on our packs. Ben has attempted to climb Little Bear 2 times in the past and has been turned back each time due to the weather. The sky was clear as we began hiking up the trail and we were confident that it would hold out so we could summit.

The trail started out fairly easy as we hiked up the valley. Before long we reach the point where we were on a class 3 trail and were beginning to boulder. We then had to do some class 4 moves over a head wall before continuing up more class 3 bouldering.

About 500 feet from the ridge I started getting nervous about the exposure so we roped up for the next 100 feet of class 3 bouldering and the last 400 feet of class 4 maneuvers before we reached the knife ridge (in the picture below). We remained roped along the ridge for another 100 feet of class 4 moves before leveling out to a much easier scramble to the coveted summit.

We reached the summit of Little Bear at 8:30 am. While resting on the summit we called Staci & Julie, ate a snack, and marveled at the views of the surrounding dessert valley and spectacular mountainous peaks. We took a look at the ominous ridge between Little Bear and Blanca and decided there was too much snow, so we decided to forgo the traverse and head back down Little Bear on the standard route. If we had brought our ice axes and crampons with us we probably would have attempted the traverse, however it just wasn’t smart to try it without the necessary gear.

Around 9:00 am we began to make our way down the tricky class 3 down climb. I’m so glad that I had Ben with me on this climb. He would always go first on the repels to test the routes. He was an awesome guide! As we worked our way down, we began to feel a little uneasy as we could see snow covering the class 4 “Hour Glass”, an obvious deep gully, on the standard route. We used 2 sets of fixed anchors to repel down to the fixed rope in the Hour Glass. The “Hour Glass” has also been called the “Shooting Gallery”. Any rocks that come lose at the top will be funneled down thru the middle of the gully creating a very dangerous position for the climbers below. At one point I knocked off a rock with the rope and it tumbled down hitting my shin. This is the crux of the climb where you would normally repel off of a fixed rope. Over half of the “Hour Glass” was still under snow and the fixed rope was virtually useless. We used the anchors of the fixed rope to repel 60 meters down. At this point we were able to pull enough of the fixed rope up to tie a loop in it, attach a carabineer, and repel another 60 meters down to a rock ledge. There wasn’t anywhere to fix an anchor for another repel on the ledge, so we worked our way down another 20 feet to a different ledge where Ben spotted a good anchor.
From this point on we don't have any pictures...it was too scary to take pictures! Our rope was about 20 feet too short to get us to the next ledge, so Ben attached an assortment of webbing and cord to the rope to give us enough length to repel down. Once we had both made it to the next ledge down we began to pull the rope back thru. Suddenly we realized that by having the webbing on the rope it wasn’t going to go thru the carabineer at the top. The rope was probably 50-60 feet above us, so Ben ascended to the rope. He then repelled himself back down, took off the webbing & cord, and down climbed back to the ledge where I was waiting. His maneuvers made me very uneasy. If Ben had fallen he would’ve gone more than 2,000 feet before hitting the rocks below. Not only would I lose a good friend, I’d also be left without a rope on an impassible ridge in the middle of nowhere. It was at this point that I really thought, “I could die here today!” All I wanted to do was get home to hug Staci and Brody. Ben however was extremely calm and was good at figuring out a solution to the problem. His lead climbing experience was invaluable to us at this point. After making it safely back down, he was able to put in a couple of nuts and attached a cord which fixed another repel to cross the snow fields below us to another section of rock. This was a tricky repel because we had to move ourselves across the mountain. If we were to slip on the ice we would pendulum across the mountain and be stuck in the middle of the snow field. Once we both repelled across the snow field we had one more section of snow to cross before getting back to the trail that would lead us to Little Bear’s southwest ridge. Ben went first. He worked his way across the snow, slid down a small section, and kick stepped his way across the snow field (facing the mountain with his back the valley below) using sharp rocks as ice axes. I followed his lead but was extremely nervous. Ben actually came half way back and kick stepped holes deeper so I could more easily cross the snow field.

Once we made it across the snow we worked our way towards the southwest ridge. We followed it to the notch where we descended to another couloir working our way down a scree field. At one point I knocked loose a basketball sized rock. I yelled below to Ben to let him know a rock was coming. He moved to the side just as the boulder flew by his head. We were wearing helmets…but a helmet wouldn’t have protected him against this boulder. We continued down the class 3 rock until we reached a snow field. By this time in the day the snow had softened enough that we could slide down a couple hundred feet to a rock section. We slid down another snow field a few hundred feet to the trail which lead us back to our camp at Lake Como.

We were very relieved to be back on flat ground. Back at camp we decided that we didn’t have the energy to make an attempt to climb Blanca or Ellingwood the next day. Instead, we made lunch, packed up, and headed back to the truck. Once back at the truck we realized it wasn’t over yet. We still had to drive 2.5 miles down the worst 4wd road in Colorado to get back to safety.

Comfort and relief didn't come until I walked into Amicas and saw my beautiful wife and son.