Date: 3/19/09

Peak: Capitol Peak

Climb: NE Ridge (Knife)

Ski: Secret Chute

Crew: Joe Brannan, me

Capitol Peak has been in my head for a long time…A LONG time. I remember paging through Lou Dawson’s 14er guide while in elementary school, thinking, “How did he ski that?” I remember hearing my dad telling stories of trying to climb it in the winter and failing…twice. I remember the first time in 2005 when I climbed it during the summer, and then in 2007 when I climbed it for the first time during winter. I also remember (very vividly) the Spring of 2008 when Andy Dimmen and I tried to ski this peak, we were too late, too tired, and maybe even too scared to continue on, we rapped in to the secret chute and slogged our way back out of Pierre Lakes Basin.

After looking at pictures over the last week, I managed to convince Joe that it was worth begging the boss for a day off to go ski Capitol. Somewhat reluctantly, he decided to do it. Joe and I talked about how this mountain would actually keep us up at night if we started thinking about it too much during a given ski season. The couple nights before the big day were no different.

Joe drove up to my house in Basalt on Wednesday afternoon; I was still at the office when he got in to town. Our original plan was to walk in as far as we felt was reasonable that night and sleep for a few hours before the big morning. Through a slew of events (pretty much my fault), it was 7:30 before we were even ready to leave Basalt (and I had to drive back down to Carbondale to get my camera). We opted to still drive to the trailhead, but to sleep there rather than walk in, as we thought we would get more sleep.

Alarms set for 12:00AM We went to sleep around 8 pm. My alarm died during the night, and around 12:45 Joe yells “Dude! It’s 1:45.” That lit a fire in the bottom of my sleeping bag, only for me to jump up and realize he was off an hour, it was only 12:45. We quickly ate and put the boots on for the day. We were walking at 1:25 AM.

Joe and I were moving oddly fast for the first 3,500 vertical to Moon Lake. I’m not sure if it was the 2 five dollar footlongs I ate for dinner, or the massive lunch Joe at the day before, or maybe the fact that we had a nicely packed snowshoe trail to blast up, but either way, we were trucking.

Photo: Jordan—One of our few breaks down low

After moon lake, something to do with my motivation crumbled a little bit, and I slowed down considerably. I wanted to make myself move faster, but something wasn’t letting me.

Photo: Jordan—Moon above Moon Lake

But then the sun came up:

Photo: Jordan—Mount Daly

Finally I made it to the small bench below K2 where Joe had broken out the Jetboil stove. We had some tea and Ramen, harnessed up, cramponed up, and otherwise geared up for the rest of the climb. We also had our first views of the beast:

Photo: Jordan—Capitol Peak

Eating some food and the short rest gave me some sort of new motivation. It was my turn to lead, and I think the technical side of it makes it more fun for me, and therefore more motivating.

Climbing up to K2 was Sporty:

Photo: Jordan—Joe Climbing K2

Photo: Jordan—And Summiting

Photo: Joe—Jordan looking at the objective

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