Herein lies another posting of the adventures in my miss-spent youth, posted today so the miscreants who shared this bit of buffoonery can enjoy it in a format that did not exist when we commited these crimes against good sense (and also posted while they are still around to enioy reading about them). January, 1981, my partner Charlie Pitts and I skied in from Aspen to climb the north face of Pyramid Peak. Some years later Charlie wrote a story of our north face adventures and gave me a copy; unfortunately his submission to some climbing rag went unpublished. If I ever find it in the chaos that passes for my files, I will post it here as an addendum. In the mean time you, gentle reader, will just have to get by on my very fallible memory. By way of background, Pyramid Peak is one of six 14,000 + ft peaks in the Elk Mountains around Aspen and has a justly earned reputation for being a very steep pile of choss. I have always loved climbing Pyramid Peak but many folks are put off by the rottenness of the sandstone, siltstone, and shale of which it is composed. By the time of Charlie’s and my ascent, I had already climbed the north face once during the summer and was hoping that the frozen conditions would make it much more stable and safe. Spoiler alert: Pyramid Peak IS a pile of choss, but a very beautiful pile of choss; and it was much safer being all frozen together (mostly) in January.

Our tale starts with Charlie and me skiing in with ridiculous loads up the snowcat track starting at the end of where the road was plowed. We were able to flag down a couple of youths on snow mobiles who were successfully bribed into hauling our sorry selves and huge packs up to the edge of Wilderness area boundary at Maroon Lake. This would have “interesting”, but not tragic consequences in the fullness of time. Having thus earned a several hour bonus on our approach march, we were able to ski up the valley and establish our first night camp on the large recessional moraine at the base Pyramid Peak. We stamped out a snow hole in a depression in the snow between two large pine trees, collected dead branches from the snow wells beneath some of the larger trees, made a small winter camp fire, and settled into making dinner and tea. Many pots of tea were drunk and many tall tales were told as the camp fire sank deeper into the snow. We were shaken from our reverie by flames suddenly erupting out of the snow beneath both adjacent pine trees as our fire had melted down through the snow and burned into a buried hollow log. Much frantic scrambling about and throwing of snow prevented our burning down the local grove of pine trees. It would have been really embarrassing to start a forest fire in the depths of winter.

The next morning we humped our ridiculously heavy packs several thousand feet up the steep slopes that lead into the cirque beneath the north face. Since the steep slopes and numerous small trees precluded being able to ski this section or use the snowshoes we brought, we beached our skis at the base of the slope and just post holed our way up, still carrying those useless snowshoes. By late afternoon we made it up into the cirque and found a huge, cabin-sized boulder near the base of the north face that had a gap beneath it large enough and flat enough to provide a sleeping shelter for both of us. This would be our base camp for the next two days.

On the third morning of our trip we got a “crack of dawn” start just as it was light enough to see. We made pretty good progress climbing mostly unroped up the snowy ledges of the left-side buttress. Our unroped “third classing” of this section, while a bit dicey, gave us the a beneficial time cushion that would be critical later in the climb. Just below where that buttress becomes much steeper we found a narrow ledge about 6 inches wide that traversed around the corner and into the bottom of the central snow field. Here we paused for a quick drink, a snack, and donned our crampons before proceeding up the snow field. The lower portion of the snow field was at a slightly lower angle and contained deeper snow, so we felt comfortable climbing this section unroped. However, higher up the snow field got steeper and consisted of snow on top of ice, at which point we roped up.

At the top of the snow field we worked our way up a series of short cliffs and snowy ledges that trended off to the right above the snow field. This was the technical crux section of the climb as it was the steepest and contained the most challenging short rock sections. We roped up for this section and were able to get some protection in, although not a whole lot. This was also the most time consuming section of the climb and it was getting late in the day. About an hour before sunset we gained the ridge leading to the summit at a point about 200 to 300 ft below the summit. It was nice to get into the sunlight after having spent the whole day in the cold shadows of the north face. It really lifted our spirits, but we still needed to make haste to the summit as our allotment of daylight was soon to run out. Upon achieving the summit we paused for about 5 minutes to catch our breath and to saver the views and the moment. It had been a great climb but we still needed to get safely off this thing.

In the fading light of the alpenglow we started our descent down the west ridge. We were pretty tired by that time and moved slowly so as to avoid time-wasting navigation errors that we could ill afford while descending the ridge. Over a thousand feet down the ridge we gained the top of a couloir that took us back down into the cirque. The couloir was filled with deep but very stable snow and plunge-stepping down it was the easiest thing we did all day. We might have even glissaded a portion of it, I just don’t remember. I do remember the full moon coming over the horizon and lighting up the whole basin. It was a real psychological lift to have the moonlight, plus it help us to find our bivouac boulder without any drama. We got back to our bivouac late in the night too knackered to cook any supper. It had been a long and tiring but wonderful day of “grand alpinism” for us.

The next morning we slept in late but were awoken by the sound of an airplane flying around above the summit of Pyramid Peak. We thought that was kind of a weird place to fly and speculated that maybe they were searching for us. This comment was made in jest as we could think of no one who would have any reason to be looking for us. We cooked and ate a huge batch of oatmeal, packed up, and started down out of the cirque. By late morning we were in the bottom of the valley and reunited with our skis. It was a most pleasant ski out through the aspen trees and down towards the parking lot at Maroon Lake when we encountered skiers coming up the trail. Being inveterate smartasses we inquired as to their wellbeing and whether they were lost or needed assistance. They informed us that they were searching for two guys lost on Pyramid Peak. It seems the two lads who had brought us in on their snowmobiles had not seen us come out at the end of the weekend and had informed the Sheriff’s office about our potential disappearance. We informed them that we had not disappeared and were, in fact, in quite good health and knew exactly where we were. That being said, we accepted their very kind offer to haul us back down the snow cat trail on their snowmobiles
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