Cathedral Peak conditions

Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
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tonythetiger
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Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by tonythetiger »

My husband and I want to climb Cathedral Peak this season. Does anyone have information on current conditions?
Since we are not fast hikers and want to hit the couloir before the snow is soft, we plan to backpack in and spend the night near Cathedral Lake, getting a very early start on the crux couloir. Any advice on the optimal time to attempt this plan would be welcome. (Presumably, it is easier to backpack to the lake late in the season enough such that the trail is mostly melted out, but early enough such that the temperature is cold enough to keep the snow in the couloir firm until mid-morning.)
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by cottonmountaineering »

the approach wont be melted out for another couple months, take a look at the trip reports for the mountain and figure out how much snow you want, this year is an average snow year
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by Scott P »

cottonmountaineering wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 8:07 pm this year is an average snow year
It's well below average in most of Colorado, including the Elk Mountains:
Snowpack may.JPG
Snowpack may.JPG (82.88 KiB) Viewed 1676 times
The area around Cathedral Peak is only 60% of average and only 14% of years have had snowpack this low.
snowpack 2.JPG
snowpack 2.JPG (59.08 KiB) Viewed 1659 times
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/co/snow/
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by cottonmountaineering »

Scott P wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 8:39 pm
cottonmountaineering wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 8:07 pm this year is an average snow year
It's well below average in most of Colorado, including the Elk Mountains:

Snowpack may.JPG

The area around Cathedral Peak is only 60% of average and only 14% of years have had snowpack this low.

snowpack 2.JPG

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/co/snow/
the roaring fork drainage had a pretty average snowpack for the year, as it gets late in the season the percentages can make it seem like way too much or too little depending on the melt off. remember in 2018-2019 season when the snowpack was something stupid like 700% of normal? in addition the snotel sites are mostly below treeline and dont reflect what is going on in the alpine zone
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by Scott P »

cottonmountaineering wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 8:48 pm the roaring fork drainage had a pretty average snowpack for the year, as it gets late in the season the percentages can make it seem like way too much or too little depending on the melt off.
It is true that late season percentages are misleading, but very early May isn't really late season (it's only a few weeks past peak and usually the deepest snow is between mid March and Mid May) and snowpack has been well below normal since late March. Only 14% of years have had snowpack this low. It has been incredibly dry and the West Slope this spring and winter wasn't that great either (though better than spring).

Drought monitor:
Drought.JPG
Drought.JPG (61.81 KiB) Viewed 1610 times
As far as the alpine snowpack, that isn't good either and is reflected by the incredibly low stream flows for the Western Slope. Even with the recent warm spell (record heat at many stations), the rivers are only running half of normal-or worse.

The Colorado River near here should be running at around 7000 CFS.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/co/nwis/uv/? ... 0065,00060

During the recent warm spell, it rose to over 3000, but before that it was not much over 2000.

The Roaring Fork did rise a bit during the warm spell, but it has been incredibly low for the time of year (at least before the last warm spell). If it's still really low during a warm spell in May, that indicated a really poor snowpack even up in the alpine zone.

Sorry, but I disagree that snowpack has been average for the area.
Last edited by Scott P on Sun May 02, 2021 9:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by cottonmountaineering »

Scott P wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 9:29 pm
cottonmountaineering wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 8:48 pm the roaring fork drainage had a pretty average snowpack for the year, as it gets late in the season the percentages can make it seem like way too much or too little depending on the melt off.
It is true that late season percentages are misleading, but very early May isn't really late season (it's only a few weeks past peak) and snowpack has been well below normal since late March. It has been incredibly dry and the West Slope this spring and winter wasn't that great either (though better than spring).

Drought.JPG

As far as the alpine snowpack, that isn't good either and is reflected by the incredibly low stream flows for the Western Slope. Even with the recent warm spell (record heat at many stations), the rivers are only running half of normal-or worse.

The Colorado River near here should be running at around 7000 CFS.

https://waterdata.usgs.gov/co/nwis/uv/? ... 0065,00060

During the recent warm spell, it rose to over 3000, but before that it was not much over 2000.

The Roaring Fork did rise a bit during the warm spell, but it has been incredibly low for the time of year (at least before the last warm spell). If it's still really low during a warm spell in May, that indicated a really poor snowpack.

Sorry, but I disagree that snowpack has been average for the area.
peak average snowpack was 16.2" SWE for roaring fork
peak snowpack for roaring fork this season was 15"
this is 92% of average

i would consider this average
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by DaveLanders »

I climbed Cathedral on 6/8/94, which was also a year that the snowpack went away early. The trail to Cathedral Lake was dry almost to the lake, and the couloir was in good shape. The problem was the low angled slopes between the lake and base of the couloir. That was all soft snow which was a postholing nightmare on the descent in the early afternoon. I don't know if snowshoes would have helped or not. An alpine start would have been better; I left the trailhead at 5:30, which seemed reasonable at the time, but wasn't early enough.
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by Scott P »

cottonmountaineering wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 9:35 pmpeak average snowpack was 16.2" SWE for roaring fork
peak snowpack for roaring fork this season was 15"
this is 92% of average
Median peak for Roaring Fork is 17.3 inches (4/8) and 2021 peak was 15.0 inches (4/1). That's 87% of average, which wouldn't have been that bad if the trend continued. That was back on April 1 though. It is May 2. April is usually a big snow month in the area (even though snowpack starts to decrease), but was really dry this year.

For example, Aspen only had 0.62 inches of precipitation in April. That's less than 34% of normal.

So, April 1 was looking OK (but not great), but a very dry and rather warm April killed the snowpack. Now snowpack is well below normal. It's easy to tell just by looking out my window.
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by BKS »

I don’t know current conditions, but did this peak last year about this time of year. A couple in the group hiked up the afternoon before like the OP is considering. The rest of the group left early enough to meet up in the basin at first light. The afternoon group reported a considerable amount of postholing with overnight pack in afternoon slush. We cruised through in the cold early morning supportive refrozen crust. It wasn’t that long to the basin/lake camp site 1 1/2 or 2 hrs if I remember correctly.

The decision of daytripping vs overnight camping has gotten easier for me and has skewed heavily towards daytripping. Overall effort is usually less with day trip. I would certainly recommend it especially with cathedral in spring snow.
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by ScottLovesRMNP »

How bad is it, really, to do this in late season when the snow is gone? I know it's steep, slippery dirt, but is it less safe that way than with steep snow? This may be irrelevant, since the OP seems interested in a snow climb, but I am just curious if anyone can compare the challenge/safety of the route with snow vs. dry?
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by justiner »

It's pretty steep and pretty loose. If you're with someone, the chances you'll be kicking down something to them are quite good. Bring your helmet. It's quite amazing how middling some standard routes of Centennials are. It's not quite the black gully route up Teakettle, but it's a good warmup to it.
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Re: Cathedral Peak conditions

Post by dwoodward13 »

BKS wrote: Sun May 02, 2021 10:41 pm I don’t know current conditions, but did this peak last year about this time of year. A couple in the group hiked up the afternoon before like the OP is considering. The rest of the group left early enough to meet up in the basin at first light. The afternoon group reported a considerable amount of postholing with overnight pack in afternoon slush. We cruised through in the cold early morning supportive refrozen crust. It wasn’t that long to the basin/lake camp site 1 1/2 or 2 hrs if I remember correctly.

The decision of daytripping vs overnight camping has gotten easier for me and has skewed heavily towards daytripping. Overall effort is usually less with day trip. I would certainly recommend it especially with cathedral in spring snow.
I was one of the ones in BKS's group that backpacked in the evening before (mainly to do some astrophotography, I agree with BKS that if you only objective is to climb Cathedral, effort wise day tripping is probably the way to go). We did this on Memorial Day weekend if memory serves correctly. We had mostly dry trail up until the final half mile or so to the lake. I had lugged along snowshoes, which I was cursing at the car, but once reaching this section, were worth their weight in gold. The other person who camped didn't bring snowshoes, and spent the better part of a hour+ wallowing in this final half mile. He ended up being so exhausted that he did not attempt the peak the following morning.

I'd either a) day trip it like BKS did b) bring snowshoes for the camp in the evening prior or c) wait until a CR says completely dry to the lake. Even a conditions report with someone getting away without snowshoes (assuming they have snow) may not mean anything if they had a cloudy/cool/super hard overnight freeze, ect and you have the opposite.
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