By Dougald MacDonald
Most climbers have no idea how hard it is to do even modestly difficult routes while carrying a pack. 5.7? Beginners climb 5.7 on their first day on the rock. Grade 3 ice? C'mon...you don't even need two tools for that stuff. But throw a pack full of cooking and camping gear over your shoulders, and all of a sudden 5.7 WI3 takes on a harsh new meaning. Add an all-day approach to the start of the climb and you've got a powerful incentive to keep your load as light as possible.
I had been dreaming about trying the northwest face of Apache Peak for years. This 13,441-foot mountain is smack in the middle of Colorado's Indian Peaks Wilderness, about an hour west of downtown Boulder, USA. In the summer it swarms with hikers, and in May and June skiers and boarders carve up the steep couloirs on its eastern flank. But Apache's western slopes are another story. Reaching the remote Fair Glacier, on the backside of Apache, is not at all easy during the spring season, when the northwest face is likely to be in good nick. So....even more incentive to pack light.
Greg Sievers and I started on Saturday, June 2, by mountain biking several miles past the locked gate on the Brainard Lake Road, then hiking another five miles or so to the Isabelle Glacier. From there, we climbed a steep snow couloir to a plateau at 12,800 feet, walked across the tundra slopes to the head of another couloir, and descended 2,000 vertical feet to our campsite at Triangle Lake, below the northwest face. Before dinner, we walked up to the base of the Fair Glacier and scoped possible lines. We weren't sure if the face had been climbed before, but I'm guessing it hadn't. Or maybe it had. We didn't really care—we were just out for a good adventure.
After choosing a steep gully leading to a broad face of mixed snow and rock, we headed back to camp, pulled our sleeping bags over our legs, and watched the fading sun play on the rock spires around us as we cooked. I had stripped my load to the minimum and packed a thin, half-length foam pad; I'd rest my feet on my pack and the rope and my head on extra clothes for a pillow. For a bag, I chose the Phantom 32. I knew its 800-fill down would keep me warm enough inside a small tent to justify taking a superlight bag, and during the long approach I was grateful for the Phantom 32's compactly stuffed package, weighing less than a pound and a half.
I was even happier for the lightweight load when we started climbing the next day. Greg had opted for a full-length inflatable pad and a 15-degree sleeping bag, and he was grunting and cursing as he pulled the first crux: an M5 chockstone move. We swung leads up the face and the route slowly came together: a 750-foot gully with a beautiful pitch of AI3 ice dribbles; a long pitch of 5.7 liebacking and scratching in crampons; easy mixed ground to a spectacular snow arête and a traverse on steep snow to skirt a blank headwall; and finally a steep gully with easy ice bulges leading to the summit. In all we belayed 10 pitches with a 70-meter rope, plus hundreds of feet of simulclimbing.
Toward the top ominous clouds rolled over and it started to snow, and on the summit the hairs on my hand stood up and my camera emitted weird squealing noises. We stuffed our gear into our packs and raced off the high point, inadvertently heading down the wrong gully and forcing a long march back to the snowshoes and ski poles we'd left at Isabelle Glacier. By the time we were back at the bikes, we were exhausted but happy. We'd climbed a good route, and we hadn't seen a soul all day in one of Colorado's most popular wilderness areas. After 13 hours on the move, the swooping bike ride back to the car made for a fast finish to a superb day.
See more photos and details about the route at: http://www.mountainproject.com/v/colorado/alpine_rock/indian_peaks/105972664.
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