Alpen Casual: The Mayflower-Quandary Traverse
I choked on the glob of bile mixed with snot that had coagulated in the back of my throat. I hacked it up a little, and then spit it out into the open space beneath me. I was in the middle of what would become the “crux” section of the route that we had chosen to explore that day, a half boulderfield-ridgeline jaunt across a section of the Tenmile Range that was oft looked upon, but rarely contended with in this area, let alone this time of year. It was November 1st. I had gotten off work that morning from a less than expected pretty boring night shift. I met Matt Clark, my partner for the day, in the McCullough Gulch trailhead parking lot, the spot that hopefully, we would return to some hours later after a successful day plotting a new course across the Tenmile. We dropped Matt’s car at the trailhead and drove together in my 4Runner to the Mayflower Gulch trailhead, on nearly the exact other side of the range.
Our route for the day was simple. Matt suggested roughly where we would go weeks earlier, but we became more serious about it after looking further into the topo maps of the area and realizing that we could actually pull it off. It involved quite a bit of scree walking, vertical gain, and chossy unprotected climbing, but the meat of the distance in reality only really consisted of going up for a while, and down for a lot longer. We would insert into the Tenmile Range via Mayflower Gulch, climbing the Gold Hill side of the cirque until we reached the summit of Drift Peak, from there, we would traverse across the ridge leading to Fletcher Mountain, which included some of the infamous crumbly spires that one would have to contend with as well if doing the “Mayflower Cirque Traverse” (5.7 III). The intention for the route was to deviate from many of the Tenmile Traverses in the area already set, where we would traverse over the range west to east, as opposed to many of the scattered north to south traverses that scattered the windblown and snowy peaks. The time of year that we did it in ended up being kind of perfect, although at the same time entirely on accident. The Tenmile Range, as with my closer to home range of the Sawatch, is famous for it’s questionable choss where you don’t want it to be. It’s also known for it’s questionable mid-winter snowpack. Meaning unless you wanted to climb variable mixed terrain in snowboarding or ski boots and have to carry them for half the trip, the only time that the rock would be solid enough in ice without having too much snow would be in the late fall shortly after a good dusting from an early-season storm. We didn’t realize that until later obviously, but the sweet serendipity of ignorance was on our side this time around.
I knocked my boots together after finishing tying them tight at the Mayflower Gulch trailhead. The soles of my boots still had mud and scree bits on them from the season prior, when I had made a late-winter season summit of Pacific Peak via the same area. My girlfriend, Sarah, and I had to contend with a little bit of mud and melt later on in the day. Interestingly enough, from the route we had planned, we could nearly bop over to the summit of Pacific that day as well, but time and expedience dictated otherwise. We began our trek into the cirque, following the buffed-out old mining road used nowadays as an approach trail for climbers and skiers to access the inner sections and couloirs of the cirque. The trees around and above us still held a small dusting of snow from the storm a few days prior. This one smaller than the one a week before, but with not that significant of accumulation due to the temperatures. As the sun rose above the ridgeline before us, the fluctuation of temperature that we would contend with that day became more apparent. As it would seem, the theme for the day would be that as long as you were in the sun and the wind wasn’t blowing too hard, you’d be hot, and if you were in the opposite, much too cold.
I unzipped the two top layers that I had on over my baselayers and took them off while Matt took care to adjust his boots. Matt had brought along a new pair of mountaineering boots that he meant to break in for the season. This would prove to be less than a good idea on his part due to the inevitable blisters and chafing when any person breaks in new mountain boots, but he’d be a trooper and push through it for a while. I scanned the upper ridgeline of the cirque. What I’d deduced from looking at a few topo maps, at face value seemed to be proving true. In order to reach the boulder field ramp behind Fletcher Mountain to access the west ridge of Quandary, we would have to first traverse across two possibly technical spires on the extending ridgeline up from Drift Peak. Everything looks bigger from below, and this was no different. The spires looked bigger than expected of course, and I took a mental note of the longer amount of time it may take to cross over that section than planned. Even longer if Matt and I found the need to establish a belay for one another.
We brought along a 40 meter, 7mm semi-static rope for an emergency rappel or belay if need be, along with that a highly-abbreviated alpine rack consisting of about 5 alpine draws, some nuts, and some hex-nut hybrids from Wild Country that I had fallen in love with over the past two seasons of climbing similar terrain in Rocky Mountain National Park. I snuck away some coradlette and a few longer slings as well in case we had to leave anything. There’s never a goal to litter the alpine with anchor tat, but it’d be a hell of a lot less litter if need be than me being stuck up there to get picked at by the crows. Along with our rope and rack, we each carried tools and crampons. Like I said, this route is best done in the early-winter, late-fall season, and with that there should be the expectation of ice and mixed terrain. This is Colorado, and this is the alpine. I came for a full-on, well-boldied adventure. I’d damn well find one if I had to.
As we climbed the ridge leading to the summit of Drift Peak we passed two parties intending for the same location, although they would return from whence they came upon reaching the summit. Drift Peak remains to be a popular 13’er objective in the area for locals and tourists alike due to the short approach required in order to reach the summit from Mayflower Gulch. Not many others than ourselves seemed to be preoccupied with the particular overall objective that we had in mind for the day. The Tenmile Range, like the Sawatch, seemed to only intrigue the bold. Matt bent down again to try and adjust his boots while I checked the time. Pulling back the sleeve of my jacket, I realized that we had only been away from the trailhead for less than an hour and we were nearly to the summit of Drift Peak. We may not need to account for that extra time across the spires after all.
Upon reaching the summit of Drift, it was obvious that conditions were near-perfection. There was little to no snow drifting across the boulder field that we needed to cross to get to the west ridge route of Quandary, and the little ice within the cracks and nooks of the spires was just enough to solidify the rock more while not requiring any too technical movement. We moved across the cirque, tackling the first spire in our way with ease. Nothing harder than 5.1/M1 in a few of the moves, with forgiving route finding. The second spire would prove to be otherwise however, presenting one of the locations where the route would earn a 5.3/M2 rating. We followed a broken rock shelf across the side of the spire, to where it led to a cracked dihedral ending in a short chimney. The steepest part of this section being only about 25-35 feet, but the exposure below was significant with the ridgeline falling away on either side of us. There was no good place for a bomber anchor, and we intended to keep our current pace, so Matt and I agreed a careful solo of the section was agreeable for our situation. I popped the tools off the back of my pack and put on a thinner pair of gloves. Matt did the same, with the addition of donning crampons as well. I relied instead on the rubber edge of the front of my boot, as the crampons that I elected to bring for the day were more of the glacier-walking type, and my climbing was much more secure in this style if I had the use of monopoints. Regardless, I spent plenty of time in the years prior climbing free with my boots, and this was going to be really no challenge for me.
The hooks in this section were perfect, providing more than enough protection in the rare occurrence that I lost my footholds below me. The chimney section ends with a solid, yet slightly tedious torque of the pick in a large crack. I was especially happy with the solid nature of this move, as it required a pretty exposed layback over open space before I slipped into the offwidthy-flake that we would stay behind for protection until nearly the conclusion of this technical section. I shouted below after making it through the chimney to make sure that Matt wasn’t having significant difficulty. I didn’t entirely grasp what he said, but it sounded like joyful screaming, so all was still good in our world. We continued on, up and over the ridge and across the boulder field, towards where we would join up with the “West Ridge” (5.0 III) route to the summit of Quandary Peak.
I shook out my hands in the sun, trying to ward off the pain of the screaming barfies that I had developed while working through the problem of the crux. The entire dihedral and chimney were in the shade, interrupting the warmth that we thought we would enjoy nearly the entire day. That would end up being the only truly “cold” section that day, as the rest of the route was in the open, but the combination of altitude with a genuine lack of sleep would give me chills for the rest of the trip on going. Meeting up with the West Ridge was not nearly as simple as we thought it would be. The chossy “trail” that determines the line is normally pretty hard to locate in the summer, but we assumed someone would have bootpacked up there and done the work of route finding for us already. We ambled along the top of the blocky exposed ridge until we could locate the prints rising from the Blue River side of the range. We had found the end to our route, but the summit of Quandary was still a few hundred feet above us. Continuing on, it was evident that the sun wanted to bake us. I pondered whether I would be more wind burned or sunburned by the end of the day while we plodded upwards. It was more a wonder how the snow around us wasn’t melting, let alone breaking into spontaneous combustion.
Interestingly enough, the West Ridge held it’s own minor technical sections as well. This pleased me, as I was a little concerned that this whole day was just a lot of scree walking to reach a short and chossy mixed section. We downclimbed and then reascended some interesting slab features, all with a spectacular amount of exposure. That pretty much answered the question in my mind of why someone would opt to climb Quandary from this route instead of the much more trafficked “East Slopes” (II). I could only imagine how fast one would be able to run this ridgeline in the summer with a good pair of trainers or approach shoes on. I’d have to say that was probably my only complaint for the day, being that it felt hot enough to wear approachies, but I was still in my toasty mountain boots.
We continued on and reached the summit of Quandary with no issue, our remaining worries for the day being that of only how many tourists we’d have to contend with on the way down. It was about 1:45PM at this point, and that was when a large majority of the less-prepared parties on the mountain realized their mistake in objective for the day. In the past I would have been more understanding and patient with people like that, but after too many longer than expected days on Long’s Peak the season prior helping to get underprepared tourists out of their own self-created problems, I had the tendency to keep my eyes down and just nod and give a quick greeting. Luckily for us, it was the beginning of the Rocky Mountain Winter, and the snow a couple days before prevented a lot of the underprepared from even considering one of the most popular 14’ers that day. Matt and I chatted, laughed, and made fun of each other most of the way down the trail to his car. Pretty mega of a day, but pretty casual as well. I’m happy with that.
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