Thunder and Lightning

Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
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dpage
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Thunder and Lightning

Post by dpage »

Has anyone been up these recently? I was thinking about things in the trees that I haven't been up. Thanks for any beta in advance.
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cougar
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Re: Thunder and Lightning

Post by cougar »

I did end of Nov + Dec - was a lot less snow then, about a foot or so of snow. Seems like a few other people have been up during that time. The north ridge of Thunder from Wind River is a lot more work with snow - steep scrambling on snowy rock. For just Lightning Peak, the easier winter route would be to approach from the Storm Pass trail that leaves Lily Lake and go up the saddle between Estes Cone and Lightning Peak. I took this route in Dec and found other tracks that were partially snow covered. It's less off-trail travel (about half) and trailbreaking, and less steep. Plus a fairly open/thin forest with little deadfall and a couple small meadows. But then it's a ways over to Thunder and back to Lily Lake.
MattK
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Re: Thunder and Lightning

Post by MattK »

Don't know if you're still looking for info, but I was on Lily Mountain, just east of there on Wednesday. I was going to traverse over to Gianttrack and back. Didn't think I'd encounter the snow that I did. With the snowshoes conveniently in the car, I was trudging through knee to waist deep snow on the north and east aspects of Lily. Hope that helps.
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dpage
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Re: Thunder and Lightning

Post by dpage »

Thanks for the information each of you. We went from the Longs peak TH, thinking that to Storm pass would have been a well travelled winter route. To Eugina mine we used spikes 90% of the way then put on snowshoes for the slopes of Estes cone but weren't feeling like breaking trail the entire way along the cone to storm pass then up lightning. Just a couple of lazy winter hikers I guess.
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