Gore Crest Traverse

[-wren-]

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Wren, I know the post sort of blew-up from your initial inquiries, but I think many of us Gore-heads just can't help ourselves from delving in on this subject.

Cheers!
Brandon

No worries at all! It’s a good convo. Was unaware of how bad the rock on hail-sleet is, gnarly stuff.

[gore galore]

The longest Gore Crest traverse was done by Robert Porter in the mid 1990's as part of his traverse of the Summit County boundary. He did five or six separate trips over a couple of years along the length of the county boundary crest of the Gore Range from Highway 9 to north of Sheep Mountain and then south to Fremont Pass.

Robert climbed solo, had a rope, placed protection and bivyed or camped on some of the ridges and peaks. He traveled slow taking as near as I can estimate from some accounts of some 30 days for about 70 miles.
He kept to the ridges except in a couple of places where he had to do a climb around to place protection and then come back and complete the traverse. He indicated a 4-day climbing traverse of the 9 Zodiac Spires.

He gave several slide shows of his traverse of which I attended some but do not remember the details. When I last corresponded with Robert in 1997, he had 2½ miles left to go of the ridges between Mount Valhalla and the Zodiac Spires.
I regret not following up on his last section and have since long ago lost contact with Robert. I would like to think that he completed the last section as no one has duplicated to my knowledge his route since.

[Jorts]

The longest Gore Crest traverse was done by Robert Porter in the mid 1990's as part of his traverse of the Summit County boundary. He did five or six separate trips over a couple of years along the length of the county boundary crest of the Gore Range from Highway 9 to north of Sheep Mountain and then south to Fremont Pass.

Robert climbed solo, had a rope, placed protection and bivyed or camped on some of the ridges and peaks. He traveled slow taking as near as I can estimate from some accounts of some 30 days for about 70 miles.
He kept to the ridges except in a couple of places where he had to do a climb around to place protection and then come back and complete the traverse. He indicated a 4-day climbing traverse of the 9 Zodiac Spires.

He gave several slide shows of his traverse of which I attended some but do not remember the details. When I last corresponded with Robert in 1997, he had 2½ miles left to go of the ridges between Mount Valhalla and the Zodiac Spires.
I regret not following up on his last section and have since long ago lost contact with Robert. I would like to think that he completed the last section as no one has duplicated to my knowledge his route since.

Your wealth of knowledge on the range astounds me Joe. Thanks for bringing this insight to light. I wish there was more info out there on Robert's effort to trace the county line at a snail's pace. Sounds fascinating.

[subalpine_style]

...how bad the rock on hail-sleet is...

Another vote for that being a cruxy and loose section, I usually like sticking to the ridge proper for aesthetics and for best rock quality, but the ridge there comes apart at the lightest touch. There is also a slightly heads-up tower around there, between Point 12835 and Valhalla, almost certainly more fun going N->S since you'd be climbing upwards.

[justiner]

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[CoHi591]

Do it do it Justin! I'd like to read that TR.

[justiner]

It's been on my todo - I really enjoyed the story on the FKT site. Maybe a good candidate to partner up, if there is legit technical climbing. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as my experience in the Gores is literally, "Buffalo Mtn" and fishing in the lake below Red Mountain.

[-wren-]

It's been on my todo - I really enjoyed the story on the FKT site. Maybe a good candidate to partner up, if there is legit technical climbing. But I'm getting ahead of myself, as my experience in the Gores is literally, "Buffalo Mtn" and fishing in the lake below Red Mountain.

I had a feeling you had your eyes on it!

[MountainDewey]

My brother Chris and I did the traverse that Justin linked to (here) in 2020. We started at Eagles Nest and ended at Buffalo. That seems the most natural to me.

Planning the route might seem straightforward (follow the ridge!) but as we discovered there are lots of values to weigh that determine how you go about it in practice. Our philosophy was:
A) Reach every summit that is either over 13,000ft elevation or over 300ft of prominence
B) Go unsupported. Carry everything we need from the start except water.
C) We didn't carry a rope and were generally unwilling to solo anything above 5.6ish
D) We tried to stay on the ridge as much as was reasonable given B and C

We definitely skipped some established sections of the ridge including Eagles Nest-Powell traverse, Peak W, X Prime, and Zodiac Spires. In between Eagles Nest and Powell we descended to a pond to get water and make camp. Whenever we did this, we didn't resume the ridge exactly where we left off, we just chose the most logical route to get back on the ridge and to the next peak. The traverse between East Partner and W didn't appear to passable (for us) without a rope, but W and X Prime weren't above 13k and didn't have over 250ft prominence anyway so we just descended, got water, and resumed the ridge on Vista Peak. The Zodiac Spires are cool features, but compared to the scale of the rest of the peaks they're really more like ridge features than summits. None above 13k, none with more than 200ft of prominence so we bypassed them. Also we have soloed them all before but used a rope to rappel off of a number of them, it would definitely be above our downsoloing comfort level. By our criteria technically C Prime and J are extra credit but they felt natural.

In the end I'm happy with the choices we made, I think anyone who does something similar is going to have to make some concessions about their route. One other main constraint for us was the weather. It's hard to get a weather window where you can feel comfortable about electrical storms when you're above 12k for 4-5 days solid. Because I don't live in Colorado anymore we had to plan our trip dates a year in advance and just hope the weather worked out. Took us three years to get it right. I'm looking forward to seeing much stronger folks pull it off in purer style quicker!

[headsizeburrito]

Thanks for the info, it looks like you had an awesome trip and I enjoyed reading your report!

[MountainDewey]

Thanks so much, we had a blast! In terms of cruxes here's what we found:
The crux of what we did was the northwest ridge of C Prime. I think we called it 5.6 in our trip report but I've seen others call it 5.4 so we're probably just soft.
The cruxes we sidestepped:

• East Partner to W. There appeared to be a gap in the ridge north of East Partner that would require some pretty spicy downclimbing.
• Climbers Point to North Traverse. If you follow the ridge around to tag the shoulder of Keller Mountain you will probably run into some 5th class terrain. We avoided it by downclimbing directly across east to North Traverse. This ended up being one of the scariest parts of our trip. We began downclimbing a crumbling dirt rib before deciding it was safer to just run down the couloir under a huge diving board of a cornice.
• Sleet Peak to Hail Peak. We climbed Sleet from the west, then went down and camped at Snow Lake and climbed Hail from the east the next morning. Looking up at that ridge from the lake we were so glad we did.
• Zodiac Spires. Soloable in approach shoes going up, but descending will be tough without a rope, especially if you want to go in one direction.

The routefinding in the range is surprisingly hard and you can wind up backed into tough moves in so many places. Or as we found if you can try to avoid a gendarm and wind up descending hundreds of feet before you can regain the ridge.

[Ridge True 1]

Hi - this is the 1995 Gore Crest Traverse guy, Robert Porter.

My route on the traverse in the mountains was simple: if it is on the ridgeline, then up one side and down the other. It was part of my journey along the Summit County Line. The northern Summit County Line enters the Gore Range where it crosses the Blue River downstream of Green Mountain Reservoir. It zigzags across private property to the National Forest, it reaches Elliot Ridge, then continues southeast and east and northeast to Mt. Powell, then over most of the Alphabet Peaks on the Gore Range Crest, past Cataract Spires to Willow Peak, across the Zodiac Spires and south to cross Interstate 70 at Vail Pass. From Vail Pass it continues to Shrine Mountain and other summits exiting the Gore Range from the summit of Chalk Mountain across Buffer Lake to Fremont Pass.

My research prior to the Gore Range trip relied on information from many sources and encouragement to explore from friends and acquaintances. I enjoyed reading Joe Kramarsic's seminal book, "Mountaineering in the Gore Range, a record of explorations, climbs, routes, and names."

Yes, I did many slide shows raising money for the Breckenridge Outdoor Education Center. It was all fun, and I still have the slides.

I retired from the Town of Breckenridge in 2007. Presently I live in Silver City, New Mexico. I still have a home near Alma, Colorado. In 2005 I began a project to traverse the crest of southern Colorado's Sangre de Cristo mountain range. I have completed over 31 miles on the range crest beginning from Poncha Pass going southeast. I am planning to continue this summer - weather, health, and stamina permitting. The goal is to reach where US Highway 160 crosses North La Veta Pass between Alamosa and Walsenburg, Colorado.

Stay balanced.

Robert Porter