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Quandary Peak is a very good winter 14er climb. The east ridge route has very little avalanche danger and the trailhead is just off HWY 9 outside of Breckenridge.
I had already climbed Quandary Peak in the summer but Amy hadn't climbed it yet. Since the snowboarding has been so bad lately, we decided to give Quandary a shot.
January 18th, 2004
The alarm sound at 5:30 a.m. and we were up and out the door by 6:30 a.m. We decided we could take Amy's car instead of the 4runner since the trailhead for Quandary Peak is just off the highway.
This would prove to be a critical laspe in judgement. We arrived at the turn off of HWY 9 outside of Breckenridge and turned right at the fork in the road. The road was snow covered but fairly packed down so it was difficult to tell
how deep the snow was. We made it about .4 miles up the road and within about 100 yards of the trailhead when the car slid off to the side and got stuck in some of the deeper snow. We were in the process of digging out when two guys
in a Ford Expedition pulled up and with their help pushing, we were unstuck. I pulled off into a turnoff area to get off the road and out of the way. This snow was softer and the car sank again and we were stuck once more. What to do? Leave
it for later or get unstuck now? We walked up the road a little bit and now the guys in the Expedition were stuck. I didn't feel so bad now since 4wds were getting stuck too. We helped get them unstuck and they began to back down the road to
the turnout where we parked. Well the guy got stuck again, this time pretty deep. As they began to dig out, we debated on what to do. Amy car was stuck pretty bad this time, and digging would take forever. I walked back down to the car and
another vehicle had pulled up. There were 3 guys that said they would help us get out later in the day. One of the guys was Ben Clark , who summited Mt. Everest in May. My kind of
celebrity sighting. Nobody had a towrope and I knew it
would only take a slight pull to get us out. We decided to climb the peak and worry about it later. After all was said and done, we probably began hiking a little after 9:30 a.m. We had our snowshoes on our packs, but the trail through
the forest was packed down, making them unnessecary. We wanted to gain the ridge quickly so we could see where we were going and not waste time wondering in the trees. The photo below is where
we broke out of treeline and gained the ridge. Quandary's summit can be seen off in the distance.
The lower portion of the ridge had a fair amount of snow, but it was well packed down. We plodded along making pretty good time. We wanted to stay in front of the other parties, in case
we would need their help later in the day getting the car unstuck. As we climbed the ridge the snow got thinnner and thinner until eventually, it was almost nonexistent. The photo below shows the last slope before Quandary's summit.
The day was extremely beautiful and we were down to just our base layer, enjoying the warmth of the sun. The last slope up to the summit is somewhat of a grind, as it steepens more than rest of the route. The photo below shows the last push up the east ridge.
We passed a couple parties descending from the summit on this section. We finally reached the summit at 12:00 p.m., taking us
2.5 hours to make the ascent. The views were spectacular in all directions, Grays and Torreys to the east, Bross, Lincoln, Cameron and Democrat to the south, Elbert, Massive and the rest
of the Sawatch to the west, and off in the distance, the Maroon Bells and Elk Range were in view. Since there was nobody on the summit to take our picture together
I decided to do some digital magic to get the summit shot below. Amy and I took of photo of each other from the same spot, each of us standing
in a different location in the frame, then using the wonderful Photovista program, I stitched the two images together to get the photo below. This is the same program I use for all
my summit panoramas.
For a summit panoramic see NOTE and then: Click Here
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We only stayed on the summit for about 10 minutes since we wanted to stay ahead of the other parties. We passed Ben and his friends below the last push to the summit. I figured we had about an hour lead
on them so we would have time to find a towrope so they could yank us out. The descent went very quickly, allowing only a couple short glissades however. We passed
the guys in the Expedition who had got their vehicle unstuck, they were carrying their snowboards up the slope. The boarding looked to be really dismal and I hoped they were using junky boards, because they
would definitely be hitting rocks.
We made it back to the car at about 1:30 p.m. and I began digging the car out. Amy went down the road to see if anybody had a towrope. She found a couple guys heading up the road that had one,
and with 1 quick yang, we were out and free. Many thanks to all the nice people you come across in the mountains. Lesson # 1 in winter 14ering, don't get stuck on the way to the trailhead, it makes the day so much more enjoyable. Anyway, this
was Amy's 27th 14er so she is halfway there, catching up to me quickly.
For my Quandary Peak trip report from 2002 in summer conditions, Click Here
