Quandary Peak 14265' - 1987 Trip Report

By Alan Silverstein

        Sunday, June 21:  Quandary Peak, 14265'
        I climbed  Quandary Peak for the second time.  It's a relatively
        easy  Fourteener  in the  Mosquito  Range,  a bit  southwest  of
        Breckenridge  and  northwest  of Hoosier  Pass.  Just to make it
        challenging,  I climbed the  mountain at night and was on top to
        watch the sunrise...
        The previous afternoon I drove down, pausing at the Breckenridge
        Inn just as Paul and  Carolyn  Beiser  checked in.  I elected to
        continue  down to the  mountain  that evening  despite  marginal
        weather.  By  1730 I was on  the  road  along  the  base  of the
        mountain.  It's a dirt road that  heads west from  Colorado  9 a
        couple of miles  north of  Hoosier  Pass.  The road is rough but
        passable by cars along Monte Cristo  Creek, all the way to upper
        Blue Lake (a reservoir above a dam) at about 11760'.
        As the weather still looked ugly, I forewent my plan of climbing
        the  mountain  that  evening  and  camping  high  on its  ridge.
        Instead I explored  around the  valley.  There are  several  old
        mining buildings precariously perched in the most amazing places
        high up on steep slopes above cliffs.
        I decked out by my car on a flat  pull-off  north of the road at
        about 11160'.  Had dinner, and watched  clouds follow  clearings
        across  the sky from the west.  Sunset  was  marvelous.  I could
        tell from the sun on the peaks to the east that the  skies  were
        clear behind the pink clouds overhead.
        At about  0030 I woke up after half a night's  sleep.  The night
        sky was dark, moonless, clear, and full of stars.  At this point
        I had to make a tough  decision...  Get a good night's sleep and
        climb  with  the  Beisers  in  the  morning,  or  do   something
        "completely  different" and head up the mountain for sunrise?  I
        chose the latter.
        At 0115 I headed  north  from  camp up a steep,  tree and  brush
        covered  hillside,  using a headlamp.  I must have not been "all
        there" cause I put in one of the  batteries  backwards...  Well,
        they lasted a couple of hours anyway.
        Climbing at night isn't that tough as long as you're careful and
        know where you are going.  I could only see  50-100'  ahead with
        the  light, but that was enough to pick out a passable  route up
        firm  talus and on  narrow  paths  through  brush.  Generally  I
        headed right to avoid the steeper gullies further west.  I could
        see the main ridge as I climbed, and reached it at 0215.
        The rest of the route west to the summit follows the ridge, with
        a decent  trail  most of the way up.  I could see  lights in the
        distance,  and  occasional  cars going over  Hoosier  Pass.  The
        surrounding   mountains  were  giant,  dark,  silent  monoliths.
        Quandary itself rose to infinity ahead, to meet the stars.  Most
        people  would  find it eerie  and  scary  being up  there in the
        darkness...  I was exhilarated.
        I came across the ridge trail.  I  discovered I could  follow it
        without a light for a hundred feet at a time, before  losing and
        having to search for it.  During occasional  breaks I got pretty
        cold and had to add layers of  clothing.  But thanks to catching
        some sleep earlier I was reasonably  awake, unlike several years
        ago when I climbed Longs Peak at night and wanted to collapse at
        every break.
        I plodded up the ridge  from  12100' to 13100' to the  summit at
        14265'.  There were  occasional  shooting  stars.  The Milky Way
        stretched  overhead like a cloud.  The waning crescent moon rose
        along with Jupiter at about 0215.  It added enough light to cast
        a shadow  and to help me keep on the  trail  without  my  fading
        headlamp.  (Of  course I had three  extra  flashlights  along...
        small ones...  but I didn't even need them.)
        At 0435 I gained  frozen snow just below the summit and followed
        the tracks up it to the top.  The entire  summit ridge was still
        covered by a  steep-sided  wall of snow  about  four feet  deep.
        This was quite unexpected -- the first time I climbed  Quandary,
        on June 23, 1979, the summit was clear.
        So I found  myself on top, alone, an hour before  sunrise,  with
        the sky  brightening to the east.  It was cold, of course, about
        28 degrees F.  an hour later at sunrise, with stiff breezes.  It
        was also magnificent and peaceful.  An unimaginable intensity of
        peace and  silence.  Waiting  for  sunrise, I took  pictures.  I
        wrote a short bit of  prose,  more  special  to me than any trip
        report, but I'm too shy to share it (believe it or not).
        There are no words to  capture  the  experience  of a  brilliant
        daybreak  on  top  of a  mountain.  The  many  pictures  I  took
        probably won't do it justice  either.  Three things stand out in
        my memory...
        - The  extreme  slowness  of  the  whole  event.  The  palpable,
          massive inertia of the world turning.
        - The shadow of the earth itself,  crimson above ermine, a sharp
          line slowly  dropping to meet the  snow-covered  Sawatch Range
          peaks.  Suddenly they all became pink.
        - The shadow of the mountain I was on, stretching conical thirty
          miles or more across the Mosquito Range and Arkansas Valley.
        I roamed  around  the  summit  and down the ridge a ways west to
        some  increasingly-technical  14000'  pinnacles.  Started to get
        warm...  Thanks to the night climb, for once I had copious  free
        time on top, a rare  treat.  Using a page  from my  heading  and
        distance  charts book, I spent over an hour studying the horizon
        with  binoculars.  Identified  32 other  Fourteeners,  including
        Longs Peak and Pikes Peak, both about 68 miles away.
        But the real  surprise was spotting  Humboldt  and the  Crestone
        Peaks in the  Sangre  de Cristo  Range.  Turns  out they are 103
        miles  south-east!  That  is far  and  away  the  farthest  I've
        identified  any features from on top of a mountain.  So far away
        that  their  local  vertical  is about 1.5  degrees  off that at
        Quandary, due to the curve of the earth!
        Other people  started  arriving  around  0820.  Paul and Carolyn
        reached  the top about  0900.  There was quite a crowd.  At 1005
        we three took our leave and dropped over the south side.
        We looked for and found the famous glissade route down the south
        couloir.  To our disappointment, probably due to the warm spring
        weather and copious rain, there was surprisingly  little snow in
        the gully.  Eight years ago Scott Wang and I rode down from just
        a bit below the summit,  without even using ice axes.  This time
        we did a lot of careful  downclimbing  on steep and rotten rock,
        skirting  the dirty and frozen  snow.  (It  doesn't  look like a
        good summer for glissading.)
        Halfway down we started to pick up acceptable  stretches of snow
        to ride,  carefully  avoiding rocks.  We found  ourselves at the
        Blue Lake dam at 1135, took a break, and hiked down the road and
        back to our cars at 1215.
        My  time  to the  summit  wasn't  great...  3:25  for  3105'.  I
        attribute that to being out of shape, carrying a heavy pack, and
        climbing at night.  I got to spend 5:25 on the  summit,  though.
        Our descent only took 2:10.

Used here with permission of the author.

Editorial Note: The author was already familiar with this climb. Even so, I myself would not have climbed a peak at night by myself. I have done a couple of night climbs with friends and they are quite an experience. Usually everyone is dead tired and complaining about whoever talked them into doing it. A few days later everyone is asking which peak is next for a night climb. My criteria for a good night climb is a peak with a maintained trail to the summit and a night with a nearly full moon.

A warning about Quandry. The descent described here can be very dangerous. There are some cliffs with snowfields above them on the south face. A CMC member in the early 80's went down this face alone, onto one of these snowfields, slid over a cliff and was killed. The general rule of thumb that applies here is to never go onto a snowfield that you cannot see all the way down unless you have climbed up it.

Keith Jensen

Other Information

• Located in Arapahoe National Forest
• USGS Breckenridge 7.5' quad map.
• Trails Illustrated Map #109 Breckenridge, Tennessee Pass
• Rated C Moderate, 6 miles and 3400' roundtrip.
• Guidebooks:
  • Climbing Guide to Colorado 14'ers, by Borneman/Lampert
  • Colorado Mountain Ski Tours and Hikes, by D. Muller
• Quandary Peak (14,265'), June 10, 1995 - Backcountry conditions report by Bob Broeking
• What to Bring on a Hike
• Safety And Survival
• There's Weather Out There
• Learning Safety Through the Experience of Others