Mt Ouray (13,971'),
Colorado
3/13-14/99
Author:
Gina Pasquale
Trip Participants: Steve Doorn, Gina Pasquale, Norm Hunter, James Hunter,
Dave Mills, and Tasha the climbing wolf dog.
Author:
Gina Pasquale
Trip Participants: Steve Doorn, Gina Pasquale, Norm Hunter, James Hunter,
Dave Mills, and Tasha the climbing wolf dog.
With all the new snow in New Mexico this weekend it was tempting to call
the trip off and do some local skiing but we're glad we went ahead with the
climb. We headed for Poncha Pass from the Y at 8 Saturday morning. The
new snow made it a pretty drive up. We were lucky enough to see a large
herd of pronghorns and a bald eagle in the northern San Luis Valley as we
drove through. Off the north side of Poncha Pass we headed west on the old
Marshall Pass road for about 3 miles and parked the trucks at the O'Haver
Lake campground around noon. From the lake we had a perfect view of the
big eastern bowl on Mt. Ouray called the Devil's Armchair. Our route would
take us up the southern arm of the armchair. We started out hiking up an
abandoned road along Gray's creek for 1.5 miles until it intersected the
Marshall Pass Rd. again. From there we snowshoed another 1.5 miles up a
ridge to set up camp at the edge of a meadow in a beautiful grove of aspens
around 10,300'. Looking SE from our campsite gave us an awesome view of
the northern Sangres laid out before us.
The next morning we started up the southeast ridge of the peak around 7:15.
We quickly hit thigh deep powder, but the going was made easier by the
trail Norm had broken up the ridge on a "stroll" he took the night before.
Around 12,000' the snow and trees had thinned enough that we dropped our
snowshoes and continued up without them. The rest of the climb was a great
ridgewalk under clear blue skies with great views of the Sangres and
southern Sawatch. Most of the route was on talus and grass with an
occasional nice stretch of step kicking in hard windblown snow. We reached
the summit about 4 hours after starting and enjoyed the views before the
cold breeze chased us off around noon. The descent went quickly with the
occasional glissade and "skiing" on our snowshoes. After a short rest in
camp we headed back down to the trucks by 4:30. The hike back was one of
the prettiest I've done in Colorado through long stretches of aspens with
the Sangres stretched out in front of us. This was a great way to do the
peak and I highly recommend this route for any season.
