The east face of Hagerman Peak is one of the many interesting alpine faces in Colorado I had spied on some earlier bit of alpine tomfoolery that sort of just stuck in my head as an interesting thing to come back to someday. Late one spring after classes were over I was casting about for some simple-minded soul I could drag into the outback on another adventure when Phil Broskovak answered the call. Turns out that Phil was never simple minded and brought to the table his very own appetite for back country buffoonery – a new partnership was born.


We backpacked in from the Crested Butte side of the Elk Range and camped out on the shores of Snowmass Lake. The Snowmass-Maroon Bells Wilderness is quite popular with back country travelers, but most of the crowds tend to cluster around the Maroon Bells over in West Maroon Creek. The hike into Snowmass Lake is sufficiently long that it tended to filter out most of the crowds, and we had the place to ourselves for that weekend. Hagerman Peak is one of the lower summits on Snowmass Mountain and is composed of the same Tertiary granite as Snowmass and Capital Peak. The rock quality runs the gamut from solid rock with good vertical cracks to stacked blocks of death. Fortunately for us it contained more of the former than the latter. On a classic bluebird sky of a day in the Colorado high country we approached around the edges of the lake with a single rope and a modest rack of hexes and stoppers*. After stomping our way up snow fields on the lower half of the mountain, we were ready to rope up and have a go at it. Being a strong climber himself, Phil was not really interested in having me take all the leads and “drag him up something”. I can appreciate that while at the same time acknowledging that I was something of a lead hog in those days. So it’s all good as we swing leads on mostly good rock. The bottom three pitches provided the steepest ground, the best rock, and the highest quality of climbing. After that it was mostly a very steep scramble to the top, avoiding loose blocks along the way that would otherwise have ruined our rope and/or our day.


The descent off the top was probably the most unique and interesting part of our day. We had neglected to bring either ice axes or crampons as carrying camping equipment, a rope, and a rack seemed like torture enough without piling on additional gear. As an aside here, during those years I used to fantasize about becoming an old coot no longer interested in long alpine rock routes in the back country, a time when I could get by carrying a 30 lb pack and just enjoy the ambiance. Well, now I am that guy and WISH I could carry the heavy loads and do the long climbs. Boys and girls, be very careful what you wish for. Now back to our story; so here we are on the summit and the quickest, straightest, and presumable simplest way back to camp is down this steep, snow-filled couloir off on the south side of the peak. However, the top of the couloir is STEEP, although the snow is soft enough to kick steps into. That being said, the slightest bobble and one would be off like a shot and would not stop until colliding violently with the bouldery talus at the bottom. Not wishing to participate as particles in this particular particle accelerator, we each cast about for the longest and sharpest rock we could use as some sort of Neolithic ice axe. I settled on a harpoon-shaped boulder about a foot and a half long, stabbed it into the snow at the top, and gingerly stepped down into the couloir. I would kick a couple of steps down, then reposition my rock spear and repeat. This is what I used to call “interesting” and it was, in a tightly wound underpants sort of way. After about 50 to 100 feet the angle eased off a bit and it didn’t seem all that bad. I tried to convince Phil that this was actually very advanced “rock craft”, but I’m not entirely sure he was buying into that. Well, we survived our descent and wandered back to camp happy to just be there.

Postcript: Phil and I never became quite as active as climbing partners as I did with either Jimmy Newberry or Charlie Pitts, but we did have our thrills. We climbed regularly in Taylor Canyon north of Gunnison. One summer we hiked into Pyramid Peak and did a rock and steep snow route on the north face, a route I would later repeat in the winter with Charlie. We also both participated rather enthusiastically in the modern dance troupe at WSC, the “Silverheels Dancers”. That, however, is an entirely different story.

*This remains my rack of choice to this day, although I have come to appreciate the creative placements possible with tricams. As for active camming devices such as friends, TCU’s, ect, they absolutely have their place in the ridiculously uniform cracks typical of the desert and columnar jointed basalt.