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 Peak:  Missouri Mountain
 Route:  Northwest Ridge
 Range:  Sawatch
 Posted By:  witte2005
 Date of Info:  6/4/2016
 Date Posted:  6/5/2016
Details

Attempted the standard route - NW ridge. Left TH around 6:30am. Trail mostly clear of snow and ice until about a half mile past the trail junction to Belford. No spikes or snowshoes or gaitors needed up to this point. The next ~2 miles after that (to Elkhead Pass, where you can choose which route you want to take on the ascent) was a mess. The trail wasn't visible at all in the basin. Overall we would be on the trail for 10 minutes or so then completely lose it, then pick it back up again. Everything is still *very* wet with melting snow. Goretex shoes would be very helpful! As you get closer to the Elkhead Pass, there was much more postholing and often the trail wasn't visible so we just tried to stay high (off the trail - either far to the left or far to the right) and off the snow as much as possible. It added time and some mileage, but still made it to Elkhead Pass around 8:30am. I don't know if I would recommend snowshoes - half the time we were walking on open grass or trail where we don't need them at all, but then a big patch of snow would come up where snowshoes would be very helpful. No one in the group was using them before Elkhead junction.

All trails to the ascent are completely covered in snow - including the standard route. The snow is still *very* deep, though after Elkhead Pass there was little postholing (postholing on the way down but not up). I started the ascent with the group - around 9:30am-ish. The weather that day was exceptionally warm, making the snow soft and pliable, so there wasn't an ice sheet covering the snow. This was nice because we didn't cut our shins postholing up to Elkhead, but made the snow at the top and on the ascent less stable (harder to get really good footholds in because your foot could slip out) After we ascended to about 13,700 we saw a large cornice on the ridgeline route to the summit. We attempted to cut across the mountain to avoid this. This would have been doable with spikes and an ice axe. The fall would have taken us down over 500 feet. Ice axe wasn't "needed" but we turned around because we didn't have it and decided we needed it to attempt an off-trail successful/safe summit. The rest of the group went up the coulior - they told me it was doable, they got to the summit, but a ton of postholing to do so (on the way up and even more on the way down). And the trip down was a pretty tough because the snow was melting so much and made it hard to get strong footholds. They descended later than me, so postholing was probably worse. The couliours are very steep, more so than the pictures show.

Everyone I talked to ended the day with soaking feet. I unfortunately ascended in soaking feet because there is a point where a ton of water flowed over the trail (about a half mile before Elkhead), but it's covered in snow so I didn't see it! So I was water logged about 7 out of 10 miles Normally this would've been a *big* concern, but as I said the weather was exceptionally warm that day and no clouds/storms were coming in.



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