Peak: Capitol Peak
Dates: 3/14/07-3/15/07
Crew: Doug Newton, Andy Zimmerman, Jordan White (Jcwhite)
Route: West Snowmass Creek to the knife edge

Well we wanted to make this trip happen on the 13th and 14th but it seems the mountain gods made other plans for us.  We arrived at the trailhead late morning on Tuesday and followed the closed road up to the trailhead and skinned up to where the trail skirts the private property, and crosses the creek, and about here Doug’s dynafit bindings snapped off a critical piece.  So after jerry-rigging it multiple times and getting frustrated, we decided that all of us were game to come back the next day and give it another go.  So we cached our bags at about 9400 ft and skied back to our car.

Next morning we arrived at the trailhead around 8 am.  The previous day we had obtained permission to cross the private ranch here, and so we skinned on up through the ranch and made quick time to our cache.  From here we continued to follow Scottdrum’s tracks up through the forest, and in one clearing where they seemed to split, I guess we chose the wrong ones, because we had to do some bushwacking to get back to the trail.  After regaining the trail in a clearing we continued up the valley towards moon lake, switchbacking up through the trees, and snowslopes.

Finally breaking out of treeline for good, we came up and around a corner and found moon lake.  Scott’s tracks went through the lake, but we opted to traverse to climbers right and stay high to avoid the altitude loss.  We headed up to a shelf about 300 ft above the lake and made camp around 12000 ft.  We found a spot surrounded by rock protection, and protected from avalanche danger on all sides.  We dug a big hole big enough for our tent and built up a good size wall/windblock around it.

After setting up camp, and starting the snow-melting-for-water process, Andy and I went for a short skin up to around 12,600 to check out the route.  We got a good view of the route and realized we would be able skin all the way to K2…Awesome!  We yanked off the skins and skied fresh turns all the way down to camp and became pretty excited about the next day.

The alarm went off shortly before 5 am and we were hiking by about 5:50 AM.

We skinned up and around to K2, following the summer route for the most part.  These slopes were very wind-hammered and seemed very stable where avalanches were of concern.  We gained the ridge about 75 ft below K2’s summit and dropped our skis here, just as the sun was rising.


We put on the crampons, helmets, and our harnesses, and dawned our ice axes from here and headed off towards the summit of K2.  We arrived at the top and enjoyed a great view of our route for the day.

We started the down climb to the notch below K2.  After nipping over another small summit, we headed to the knife edge ridge.

All of us felt confident without ropes at this point, and continued on across and began the real climbing on the other side of the blade.

Now we actually got to gain some altitude with our crampons on, and we started by climbing steep snow for a while, every once in a while there would be some rock mixed in.  The upper part of the ridge however, held some steep snow, with some steep rock mixed in.  All of us climbed the first crux section without ropes, however we opted to leave a rappel here for the way down.  While Doug spent the time setting up the rappel, Andy and I continued on towards the summit.  The next pitch was probably the crux of the route, and involved climbing on snow dusted slabby rock.  I was still leading at this point, and climbed up it using some “odd” techniques, and after getting to the top, I waited for a while and Andy never showed up.  After a while Doug came climbing up the same route that I had taken and started setting up a belay/rappel anchor.  As soon as he was done, Andy tied in and climbed on up to the top of the crux.  This worked out perfectly because it made for a great rappel on the way down.

From here it was just 100 yds or so of ridge walking to the summit.  We reached the summit at 11:05 AM.

After sitting around and enjoying the awe inspiring view, as well as the gorgeous blue bird day we decided it was time to head back down.  We drank a little water, downed some food and we were off.  I took the lead again and made it to our first rappel, and after having Doug double check my technique (It’s been a while since I’ve been roped up), I lowered my self down the 75 or so feet to our tracks in the snow below.

Andy followed, and Doug brought up the rear.  We soon made our way to the other rappel we had set up, and I roped up and hopped down this one as well.

From here on there was only one more tricky section of downclimbing, and upon getting to the bottom of a wall of snow and rock without incident we had the difficulties behind us.

From here we went back across the knife edge and around K2 and after downclimbing K2 to our skis everyone had a sense of accomplishment and excitement.

Now for the fun part.
We strapped on the skis and were able to ski epic turns all the way down to our camp.


The slopes here could potentially be of avalanche concern, and they would have been avoidable had conditions necessitated such, but in this case, they were stable, and had 4-5 inches of windblown goodness on top.

After getting to camp and packing up, we threw on our heavier overnight packs for the rest of the ski out.  From our camp to about 10,500 was pleasant skiing, with funny wipeouts due mostly to heavy packs and trap crust…or just having fun.

After about 10,500 however it became the nastiest most unconsolidated slush any of us had ever encountered.  It was almost like skiing in water.

We dubbed lower West Snowmass Creek as “the hardest run in north America.”  We finally reached the ranch road down around 8600 ft a few face plants later
And we were all ecstatic to have gained permission to ski through the ranch rather than go around.  We skied down to where the snow ended about 200 yards from our car, and arrived at our car around 6:15 pm.

At this point the only thing any of us were thinking about was Q-DO-BA.  We made a B-line down Highway 82 and straight to Qdoba.  I kid you not…I ate 2 fully loaded (meat, both beans, rice, pico, corn salsa, habenero salsa, cheese and sour cream) burritos in that sitting.

Thanks for Reading

JW