Snowmass West slope

[Craftycritter]

Looking for hiking friends to hike Snowmass from the Lead King basin trailhead. This Friday and Sat have good weather. Open to other days also .One I would like to get marked off my list

[climbingyogi]

I highly recommend ascending the S Ridge and just descending the West Slopes! Super fun route.

[seannunn]

I highly recommend ascending the S Ridge and just descending the West Slopes! Super fun route.

For the benefit of me and others, can you give us some kind of idea of the difficulty and exposure on the south ridge?
There is not a route description on here that I can find.
Roach calls it class 3+ at its hardest.
I am more concerned about the exposure, since a lot of falls happens from ridgelines.
How would it compare to the exposure on the ridge on Capitol? (Not so much the knife edge, since that is almost unique for a standard 14er route. The rest of the ridge, before and after the knife edge.)

Sean Nunn

[Rampaging Baloths]

I highly recommend ascending the S Ridge and just descending the West Slopes! Super fun route.

For the benefit of me and others, can you give us some kind of idea of the difficulty and exposure on the south ridge?
There is not a route description on here that I can find.
Roach calls it class 3+ at its hardest.
I am more concerned about the exposure, since a lot of falls happens from ridgelines.
How would it compare to the exposure on the ridge on Capitol? (Not so much the knife edge, since that is almost unique for a standard 14er route. The rest of the ridge, before and after the knife edge.)

Sean Nunn

https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepo ... trip=21214

here is a good trip report.

[climbingyogi]

I highly recommend ascending the S Ridge and just descending the West Slopes! Super fun route.

For the benefit of me and others, can you give us some kind of idea of the difficulty and exposure on the south ridge?
There is not a route description on here that I can find.
Roach calls it class 3+ at its hardest.
I am more concerned about the exposure, since a lot of falls happens from ridgelines.
How would it compare to the exposure on the ridge on Capitol? (Not so much the knife edge, since that is almost unique for a standard 14er route. The rest of the ridge, before and after the knife edge.)

Sean Nunn

https://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepo ... trip=21214

here is a good trip report.

Yup! I read CaptainSuburbia's TR as well before heading out, as well as a few others'.

The S Ridge felt like a solid class 3 route to me with very little exposure. The only time I felt the exposure was when we took the class 4 option during the crux section, heading climber's right. If you're concerned about the exposure, I'd recommend taking the bypass (climber's left) during that section.

My group and I also found very little loose rock on this route - although you should of course always test your holds. On Capitol, I felt like I had to keep my guard up all the way from K2 to the summit (and back), which created a mentally-taxing day. But on the S Ridge, I never felt scared. It was just a purely enjoyable day.

Hope that helps!

[seannunn]

Good stuff; thank you.
Looks like it might be the way to go.

Sean Nunn

[JROSKA]

I have a source who just climbed this, he’s on here but doesn’t comment a lot who offered quite a different perspective of this route. That the ridge was the steepest he’d ever been on (which obviously would mean exposure behind you as you climb). Not sure of specifics but it makes sense given that it’s 5 k over a very short distance. I think the last 2200 feet is over 1/2 mile or something which definitely translates into a high degree slope on the ridge (mid 30’s). It’s certainly not KC North Ridge but that’s steep for a ridge. He’s done all of the Elk 14ers now and told me that any time a gully was dealt with it was the loosest Elk rock he’d ever encountered. Other than the Knife, he did compare it to Capitol in terms of exposure on the ridge near the summit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course but it’s probably a helpful reminder to remember that there’s a reason this is not the standard route for Snowmass.

[tdaniel9]

Looking for hiking friends to hike Snowmass from the Lead King basin trailhead. This Friday and Sat have good weather. Open to other days also .One I would like to get marked off my list

What about Monday the 2nd? I'll be in the area on Sunday, hopefully doing Capital early on Sunday from the lake, but would love to also get Snowmass while I'm there. I don't have a 4WD vehicle to get to lead king and don't want to get my outback stuck! Thanks! -Tyler

[climbingyogi]

I have a source who just climbed this, he’s on here but doesn’t comment a lot who offered quite a different perspective of this route. That the ridge was the steepest he’d ever been on (which obviously would mean exposure behind you as you climb). Not sure of specifics but it makes sense given that it’s 5 k over a very short distance. I think the last 2200 feet is over 1/2 mile or something which definitely translates into a high degree slope on the ridge (mid 30’s). It’s certainly not KC North Ridge but that’s steep for a ridge. He’s done all of the Elk 14ers now and told me that any time a gully was dealt with it was the loosest Elk rock he’d ever encountered. Other than the Knife, he did compare it to Capitol in terms of exposure on the ridge near the summit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course but it’s probably a helpful reminder to remember that there’s a reason this is not the standard route for Snowmass.

It sounds like maybe your friend had a bit of difficulty with the route-finding, because there is really no comparison between the S Ridge on Snowmass and the Northeast Ridge on Capitol in terms of rock quality and exposure (in my opinion).

Also - the only gully I can remember at all on the S Ridge is the access gully to the S Ridge. In which case - you don't even need to take either of those gullies. You can take the class 3 rock rib to access the S Ridge - which is what we did. I've also completed all of the Elk 14ers (including the Bells Traverse) and this was by far the most solid route I've been on in the Elks thus far.

I reached out to both of my S Ridge partners this morning to confirm that I'm not losing my mind, and they both agreed that the rock quality on the S Ridge was very good (especially for an Elk mountain) and that exposure was not a big deal. But....maybe all three of us have an extremely high tolerance for exposure and impeccable rock testing skills? I doubt it though.

I definitely don't want to sandbag a route and make anything seem easier than it is, but we all had a great experience on this route.

[CaptainSuburbia]

I have a source who just climbed this, he’s on here but doesn’t comment a lot who offered quite a different perspective of this route. That the ridge was the steepest he’d ever been on (which obviously would mean exposure behind you as you climb). Not sure of specifics but it makes sense given that it’s 5 k over a very short distance. I think the last 2200 feet is over 1/2 mile or something which definitely translates into a high degree slope on the ridge (mid 30’s). It’s certainly not KC North Ridge but that’s steep for a ridge. He’s done all of the Elk 14ers now and told me that any time a gully was dealt with it was the loosest Elk rock he’d ever encountered. Other than the Knife, he did compare it to Capitol in terms of exposure on the ridge near the summit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course but it’s probably a helpful reminder to remember that there’s a reason this is not the standard route for Snowmass.

It sounds like maybe your friend had a bit of difficulty with the route-finding, because there is really no comparison between the S Ridge on Snowmass and the Northeast Ridge on Capitol in terms of rock quality and exposure (in my opinion).

Also - the only gully I can remember at all on the S Ridge is the access gully to the S Ridge. In which case - you don't even need to take either of those gullies. You can take the class 3 rock rib to access the S Ridge - which is what we did. I've also completed all of the Elk 14ers (including the Bells Traverse) and this was by far the most solid route I've been on in the Elks thus far.

I reached out to both of my S Ridge partners this morning to confirm that I'm not losing my mind, and they both agreed that the rock quality on the S Ridge was very good (especially for an Elk mountain) and that exposure was not a big deal. But....maybe all three of us have an extremely high tolerance for exposure and impeccable rock testing skills? I doubt it though.

I definitely don't want to sandbag a route and make anything seem easier than it is, but we all had a great experience on this route.

I agree with climbingyogi here. The S ridge is a terrific route with limited exposure and good rock quality for the Elks. I was perplexed by the previous post.

[JROSKA]

His general takeaway was that it might not be right for everyone. I guess they had a couple of handholds pop out. His name is Mark and he goes by “psa954hiker” here. I’m sure he’d be happy to provide any info or go over any discrepancies in perspective.

For the record I’ve had three relatively miserable experiences with the standard route so I’d love to believe that there’s a reasonable alternative to that. My heart tells me that S Ridge could be it, but my head tells me it’s not a 14ers.com route for a reason.

[maff]

Climbed the S-Ridge this week and the biggest downside to it in my opinion is that descending the West Slopes is miserable (steep, loose, goes on forever) and descending by reversing the S-Ridge seems impractical. But the S-Ridge itself is largely good climbing on good rock. The crux headwall gets spicy (class 4 imo) if you go up and over climber’s right as we did—the rock seemed looser if you went around it low and to the left.