| Peak(s): |
Sunlight Peak - 14,061 feet |
| Date Posted: | 07/08/2014 |
| Date Climbed: | 07/03/2014 |
| Author: | fleetmack |
| Peak(s): |
Sunlight Peak - 14,061 feet |
| Date Posted: | 07/08/2014 |
| Date Climbed: | 07/03/2014 |
| Author: | fleetmack |
| Sunlight for Elysa |
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July 3, 2014 Sunlight Peak - South Face 3000ft gain from Chicago Basin, 6000ft gain from Needleton Wow, it's been awhile since I've written a trip report. 2012 was filled with laziness with regards to writing trip reports. 2013 was filled with wedding, honeymoon, and house buying, so no 14ers were climbed. 2014, well, here we go! Samantha and I had wanted to go to Chicago basin for the past several years, we finally made it work. We had goals of climbing the four 14ers in a day, or if that didn't work, over the course of our stay. We had a deadline to get in and out due to work obligations and other personal matters. On July 1, we headed out of Denver and drove to Avon to spend the night with the brother-in-law. On the 2nd we woke up and drove to Silverton and hopped "All Aboard!" the train with a 2:30 departure. Train ticket was approximately $65 for the backpacker's special, and free parking in Silverton. We arrived at Needleton around 3:30 and said adios to our train. I cached a couple of beers (broke one when I dropped it, oops, at least it was a can). Put a note in there with them to hopefully deter any beer thieves.   The hike up to Chicago Basin was interesting. Many tent caterpillars hanging down from their silk in the middle of the trail. The first mile is pretty flat, after that it is a gradual climb with a few steep sections. It took us a bit to get up there. Probably 3:30-4:00 including stops. When we arrived at Chicago Basin, we found the goats. I know you've read this time and time again, but these guys are everywhere. You'd think your piss is made out of 90 Shilling the way these goats drink it down. Samantha went down to pump some high quality H20 while I was to begin prepping food. Fuel? Check. Pots? Check. Dehydrated meals? Check. Stove... hmmm... where is the stove. Maybe it's in her backpack, not mine. Nope, not there either. Go away goats, I am freaking out here.  I'll just unpack everything again, it's got to be in here somewhere. Go away goats, this stuff isn't for you. Crap, where the hell is the stove. GO AWAY GOATS!!!!  Ok, we have no stove. I won't leave you in suspense - it was in the trunk. I forgot to re-pack it when I pulled out my rain coat before we got on the train in Silverton. This isn't good. No fires allowed in Chicago Basin. But we're in luck because people are awesome! Met Jason & Julia from Minnesota and they let us borrow their jet boil. Seriously - thank you!! We felt guilty our fuel wasn't compatible or we'd have replaced it. So we ate delicious chicken pasta, hung stuff in trees, and went to bed. Not bad for my first ever bag hanging, eh?  The alarm went off at 4am and we woke up, unzipped the tent, and said hello to Mr. Goat standing 3 feet from our tent. He startled me.  We hiked for 10 minutes and realized our trekking poles were still hanging in a tree somewhere, so we hiked back, found our poles, and started off again. Glad we didn't decide to keep going without them, we would want them later - that gully on Sunlight is a full of loose scree. So uneventfully, we made our way up to the lakes. We stopped a few times and determined we weren't feeling it for all 4 in one day today already. Later start that we wanted, tired from yesterday. We'll see what happens. A guy named Justin who was trucking at light speed passed us and headed on up. We got to Twin Lakes, they are no longer frozen but they are surrounded by snow. We did not use micro spikes, could have, but didn't. Trekking poles + stiff snow allowed us to cross several snow fields en route to the gully without issue.  Once to the gully, we realized this was going to be a loose climb down. Lots of scree, dirt, and loose rock. We looked up and saw Justin sitting on the slope between Sunlight & Sunlight Spire. We wondered if he was done already, or if he was just trying to sit there until we got up top so he didn't kick rocks down on us. Turned out to be neither. He yelled down at us asking if Sunlight was to his left or right. He was almost ready to try going up the Spire as he thought it was Sunlight Peak! We corrected him and he joined us for the the rest of this mountain. Once atop the gully, we swung a Louie and dropped down a bit. After consulting our handy 14ers.com route description pictures, we found the right way up. At one point there is some decent exposure with snow at the base of it. It was pretty iced up, so the three of us all strapped on our micro spikes for some reassurance.   That did the trick and we were gripping the mountain with confidence. The class 3 climbing was very fun. Those of you who have read my previous trip reports, or climbed with me, know I'm a huge pussy who is terrified of heights & exposure. This never played into factor, I was fine on this climb. The rock is solid, we took our time and made the right moves, and soon made it to the chimney. We climbed on through the chimney and saw the infamous summit block.  Now let me say this. I have seen pictures, videos, etc. thousands of times over of this summit block. I've always thought "What's the big deal?". I truly didn't think it looked scary. This all changed immediately. Took me a fraction of a nanosecond to decide "Yup, I'm happy not going up there." The summit marker is below that, so that means I summit. I don't care what you, Ed Viesturs, Sir Edmond Hillary, my Mom, or Justin Bieber think - I'm calling this a summit without going up there! Justin didn't either, nor did Samantha, but they were braver than me, as evidenced by the pictures.    I swear I'm not holding in some emesis there, I just have a mouth full of peanut butter sandwich.   You may notice Samantha and I are wearing shirts that say "For Elysa". This is depressing, but it is right to mention it here. In January 2013, my very good friends Jaime and Jana Rojas lost their almost-3-year-old to a viral infection to her heart. This condition is called Myocarditis. It was devastating. When they lost little Elysa, Jana started up a foundation to raise awareness of this condition. Many of us have likely had this virus, but it is highly uncommon for it to attack one's heart the way it did for Elysa. Here is a link to the story published by the Colorado Rapids (Jaime is the head athletic trainer for the Rapids): http://www.coloradorapids.com/news/2013/09/sudden-death-daughter-elysa-has-rojas-family-mission-help-others Here is a link to their foundation: http://www.forelysa.org/ Ok, back to happy times. Here is Windom  I thought we definitely had time to summit Windom. Justin was moving way more quickly than we, so he bolted ahead of us. Now comes your typical "fleetmack freaks out" tale. It's been awhile. We left the summit, headed through the chimney, then started route seeking. I was so proud of myself on this day, I didn't feel scared at all at any time, was making moves in confidence, my heart rate & sweaty palms were playing hide and seek. Samantha came to a point and looked down and said "I think this was the hard move on the way up." Then she changed her mind and said no way that was it. Me, feeling over-confident and un-scared, disagreed. I said I was sure she was right the first time and we needed to go down there. I went first. It was a tricky downclimb, but I put my fears aside and went first. I got down to a probably 6 sq. ft. platform and realized there was literally nowhere to go from here. Shit. I looked up to Samantha and said "This is wrong. There is nowhere to go and I have absolutely no idea how I can climb back up to you." I had probably a 7 foot wall in front of me with no holds of any sort, which led to a steep-angled ledge that I'd need to somehow pull my body atop. I sat there for countless minutes. I climbed up a little bit a time or three and decided there was no way I could get back up. I thought SAR was going to need to be called; else we could wait for somebody with rope. I'm not good at judging this as I'm not a rock climber, but I'd say at the very least this is a difficult class 4 move; rather I'd guess a class 5 move. It involved a fall I couldn't imagine surviving, should I slip. After 3 or 4 attempts with subsequent bail-outs, I again sat down to gather my senses. We had only seen Justin today, nobody else appeared to be on the mountain. We decided I needed Samantha's help, but could she stabilize herself enough to literally lend me a hand? We decided to try it, with 2 goals in mind A) I don't fall B) I don't pull her down with me. Crap. Heart rate around 190. Hands sweaty. Wipe them off. Put head against rock, quick prayer, deep breaths. Fleetmack - go for it, now. Foot up on the right, hand in a crack. Other hand pressed against a rock. Shimmy up a bit. Step of faith with one foot, success. Crap, where does my other foot go. 0% chance I can move it without falling. I have one foot held on by a toe, one hand hanging on to next to nothing, and another wedged into a rock sideways. Samantha's hand - grab it. She says she's stable. Trust her. I grab her hand. One thing left to do, trust her hand and move my only solid hold - my right foot. I let go and move it and she pulls me at the same time and I heave up onto the angled rock. I tell her to hold me there as I pant and after a minute, army crawl up to safety. Holy f'n shit. By far, without a doubt, the most terrifying moment of my life. Without her hand, no chance. I put myself in this position, stupid stupid, but we're good now. Sat there awhile to get my composure back. Then we worked our way down the correct route to the saddle. Here is where I was. The blue arrow is where I was sitting, the red arrow is where Samantha was sitting offering me her hand.  Doesn't look so bad in the picture, eh? Well, it is that bad to me! This slaughtered our chances of Windom today. Storm clouds coming in from every direction, thunder and lightning in the distance.  We moved down the gully quickly. Saw a group of 6 heading up the gully - seemed very risky to me. Hopefully they are all ok. By the time we were halfway down the gully, it was evident we spent too much time on the descent and couldn't get Windom today, back to camp. Postholed around the lake, but stopped to write our name in the snow. We used trekking poles instead of peeing our name into the snow, wouldn't want to attract more goats. They love yellow snow.  Does this rock look like Iowa?  Now I'm happy to see goats! Met more AWESOME people who boiled water for us so we could eat again (chicken fajitas and fleet-mac-n-cheese!). Moved our camp to a more rain-shielded area. Filtered water. Chased goats away 80 times. Had some Maker's Mark from the fleetflask. Gave away our route print-offs to some who forgot theirs at home. There's no way I can do all 3 remaining 14ers tomorrow morning before our 11:15 train to Silverton, so going to just call it a trip at this point; will get the other 3 next time. As my profile says "There's no time goals here". If I summit all the 14ers, I summit all the 14ers. If I don't, I don't. I'm just in this to have fun, and aside from my major mistake, this was fun. I was proud of me for not freaking out while on route at any time. The next morning we hiked down to the train in just over 2 hours. Not sure why everyone says the hike down takes about the same as it does to get up - we did it in about 60% of the time. My beers were there! We waited for the train, had beers, soaked feet, took pictures with an American Flag that some Outward Bound people had (it was now July 4th), hopped on the train, headed to Silverton - where food & fireworks were waiting for us! My sunglasses are covering up my Seahawks hat, just had to mention that to give the Seahawks some props. SUPER BOWL CHAMPS!! WOOOOOO HOOOOO!!!!!!!     Then we headed to Durango, where we won 2 free pitchers of Ginger Ninja beer at Steamworks, yumballs!  Happy Independence Day! Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow): 
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