June 18th, 2005
Crystal, Pacific, and Atlantic Peak are three of the highest 100 peaks in Colorado located just outside of Breckenridge. These peaks can be approached from a variety of routes starting on the east or the west side of the peaks. Roach recommends the west approach from the Mayflower Gulch trailhead if your goal is to climb all three peaks in the same day.
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Crystal Peak, Pacific Peak, Atlantic Peak
6/18/05
Crystal, Pacific, and Atlantic Peak are three of the highest 100 peaks in Colorado located just outside of Breckenridge. These peaks can be approached from a variety of routes starting on the east or the west side of the peaks. Roach recommends the west approach from the Mayflower Gulch trailhead if your goal is to climb all three peaks in the same day.
Two of my friends were getting married in Breckenridge on Saturday and since the wedding wasn’t until 5 p.m., I thought we would be able to climb something in the area beforehand. We decided on Crystal, Pacific and Atlantic Peak so we headed up to Silverthorne Friday night to get an earlier start.
Sleeping in a hotel was a pleasant treat since we normally just crash in the back of the 4runner. We were up at 5:30 a.m. and after a quick pit stop to McDs for some high-energy egg McMuffins, we were on our way. The Mayflower Gulch Trailhead is easy to find and we were able to proceed about a mile up the 4wd road before we parked and began our hike.
The morning was a little cool but since I usually get hot quickly and have to shed layers, I started in just my base layer to avoid the hassle. We started hiking up the road for a short distance just after 6:30 a.m. and decided to cross the meadow and head for the Pacific Creek drainage. We didn’t take an ideal route through the willows but luckily they weren’t covered in dew, otherwise we would have been absolutely soaked. It took some searching to find a place to cross Mayflower Creek, especially for Amy, who isn’t a rock-hopping master like myself. J I found a place to cross where you had to hop on a rock and jump about 3-4 feet to the other side. Amy didn’t like this proposition so she thrashed through the willows higher up the meadow to find a crossing more to her liking.
With that major hurdle behind us we proceeded up the drainage, zigzagging through the trees on the right side of Pacific Creek. It didn’t take look to get above treeline and views began to open up. Pacific Peak was standing tall straight in front of us as we worked our way up the drainage. There was still a good amount of snow in the area but fortunately for us, it was quite firm and allowed us easy passage across it. When the basin really opened up we were treating to our first views of Atlantic Peak as well to the south.
We decided to continue onwards to Crystal Peak since it was the furthest away and work our way back to Atlantic Peak. We got a nice view of Pacific’s west ridge as we traversed underneath it. There are some couloirs on the north side of Pacific Peak that look like a decent climb. Crystal Peak finally came into view about a mile away, but the traveling went quickly thanks to the firm snow.
Once north of the Crystal-Pacific saddle we turned south and climbed up to the ridge. From this vantage point Point 13,540 hides Crystal Peak’s summit so it was until we climbed over it that we got a good view of the upper flanks of Crystal Peak.
We decided to leave our packs here and quickly cruised up to Crystal’s summit, staying mostly on the ridge to avoid the snow. We arrived on the summit around 9:20 a.m., taking about over 2.5 hours for the ascent. I was surprised we had the summit to ourselves, I figured there would be people climbing Crystal Peak from the Breckenridge side.
We took some photos and admired the views of the Tenmile-Mosquito range. Pacific Peak looks especially impressive from this vantage point, its north face and summit pyramid are spectacular.
We departed the summit, quickly retrieved our packs and began the descent over to Pacific Peak’s north ridge. The north ridge looks incredibly steep and there is a notch near the summit that appeared to be 5th class. Knowing this route was only class 2 I figured there must be an easy way to the summit on the opposite side once we reached the notch. I had stop periodically to admire the 65-degree North Couloir on Pacific’s north face, it looks like an amazing climb.
The upper portion of the north ridge will definitely let you know if you’ve been slacking off on your cardio. As an added bonus the rock is a little loose in places but goes pretty quickly since it is fairly short.
We reached the notch and peered down the North Couloir for a few moments. There were steps kicked up the couloir so somebody has climbed it recently. From this notch it is a short scramble up some class 2+ terrain that deposits you almost directly on the summit. It was 10:15 a.m. so the traverse from Crystal Peak took us about an hour. We signed the summit register and I snapped some more photos. We had a good view of Pacific Tarn, just designated as the highest lake in the United States. It was still frozen and mostly covered with snow so it was hard to tell just how big the lake really is.
The route over to Atlantic Peak looked much more mild and we quickly set off down Pacific Tarn. The snow was quite soft at this point and I began sinking in up to my waist regularly. Most of the time I was able to get out easy enough, but every now and then it took quick a bit of thrashing and even crawling to reach firmer ground. During one crawling attempt across the snow my arm punched through the snow and a got a healthy dose of snow in my ear, which felt wonderful…NOT. We reached the lowpoint between Pacific and Atlantic Peak and it was a pretty mellow cruise to the summit.
We topped out on Atlantic Peak at 11:30 and admired the ridge between Atlantic and Fletcher Peak. The Sawatch Range was still coated in white and we could vaguely see the Cross Couloir on Mt. of the Holy Cross. We wanted to get back to Breckenridge to hang out with our friends before the wedding so we only stayed a few minutes on the summit.
We decided to descend Atlantic’s west ridge which looked a bit interesting from the summit. Roach recommends an ice ax for this route when it has snow on it due to some exposed traverses, which we had brought along. There were two sections in particular that looked a bit dicey from the summit so we were hoping they wouldn’t be so bad upon closer inspection. The ridge was just a boulder hop to the first snow traverse that turned out to be pretty mellow.
From this point we could see that if we didn’t like any of the other snow traverses, we would be able to bypass them on the right side of the ridge. We stayed on the ridge crest most of the way down, traversing along the top of the snow on the right side of the ridge since it wasn’t as steep as the left side. About halfway down the ridge the snow gave way to rock and the unpleasant boulder hopping began. The rock was pretty loose, even big ones were shifting around on us. Luckily this section was fairly short and we were able to glissade down a snowfield that turned out to be a bad idea. Once the slope wasn’t steep enough to glissade, we were left to posthole back to the rocks, trying our best to refrain from using profanities. We got stuck a few good times but managed to get back to solid ground, promising to forgo snow for the rest of the day.
It was a quick descent back down the Pacific Creek drainage, through the forest and back to Mayflower Creek. At this point our feet were already completely soaked from being too lazy to put our gators on, so we just stomped right across Mayflower Creek. Amazingly, the water in the creek felt quite pleasant and actually warmed our feet up. We found a much better path through the willows back to the road and after 10 minutes we were back to the 4runner. We didn’t see another soul all day and had this little piece of the Colorado high country all to ourselves. It was off to Breckenridge to eat, drink, and be merry with friends since we had gotten a healthy dose of solitude thanks to Crystal, Pacific, and Atlantic Peak.