I'll try to enlighten you. The 1st two sentences of Schralp's post are right on. I don't agree withpills2619 wrote:I'm a bit confused. I was under the impression that Quandary is a relatively safe mountain to climb in winter. Especially the East ridge. I'm basing this on topography and http://www.summitpost.org/colorado-14er ... ter/337648" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. I have personally never been up there so will someone please enlighten me.SchralpTheGnar wrote:You should always be willing to turn back, evaluate the conditions for yourself and make decisions based upon your observations and experience, not off of message boards on the web. Both the west ridge and the east ridge of Quandary have significant potential avalanche terrain, especially if you've never been up before. It's one of the reasons that Quandary sees so few winter ascents. I would highly advise staying off this mountain entirely.
I was thinking about heading up there on Tuesday.
the rest, esp. the part about so few winter ascents on Quandary (just look at all of the winter
trip reports on this site).
The east ridge is avalanche safe IF you stay on route. As others have mentioned, getting off
route to the south can be very bad. There is also avalanche danger in the bowls to the north
of the east ridge. So, one of the main things to evaluate is whether or not you can stay on
route? In nice sunny conditions this is easy. In a whiteout, or after dark, maybe not. So I
would suggest evaluating the weather conditions carefully, and having a turnaround time so that
you don't get caught up high after dark.