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Climbed Shavano yesterday on the eastern side, crossing what I think was the angel (for the purposes of this report I will just refer to this section as the angel; if it is wrong I apologize, I'm not super familiar with the mountain) and skirting up along the saddle to hit the summit.. After talking to some locals at gear shops in the area about snow conditions we decided to rent snowshoes and bring microspikes up with us just in case. We got an earlyish start at around 4:30 am to try avoiding some of the dreaded post holing and had a beautiful early morning hike through the trees, encountering little snow up until treeline. Once at treeline the snow became more substantial and prevalent, though not as bad as we had expected. There were a few snow fields to cross early on, but the most troublesome obstacle was actually the rain/snow and blustery winds. We encountered a large group of church retreaters as they were crossing the upper angel, so we decided to just latch onto them the rest of the way up since they seemed to know more about the mountain than we did. A few more snow fields later we were at the top. Ended up not even taking out the snowshoes or spikes the whole hike and just suffered through the little bit of post holing. The snow was soft in places, but if you have an ice ax you're good to go. We were going to traverse the saddle over to Tabeguache - which would have been easily accessable without crossing much snow, if any - but the weather was turning sketchy, so we followed the church group down the angel instead, glissading about 1000 vertical feet down until we hit a rocky outcropping and then cut left to rejoin the trail.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
I’m looking at climbing Massive on Monday and Tuesday. This report of snow conditions in the Sawatch range really helps. I’m thinking of snow shoes too, but I really want to go up in skis. It may just be too late for skis though.
Thanks for the report, I’m going to be heading up Shavano this weekend. I’ve got a question about your glissade. Was it too steep to pull off without an ice axe? I know, I know, not recommended but I’ve done several moderate glissades with my trekking poles just fine. Just wondering if it’s necessary to bring the axes. 1000 vertical feet off of the hike down sounds quite appealing.
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