"Lake Como Road starts out as a wide dirt road but turns into a HC 4WD road less than two miles in. I drove up about 5.1 miles to a parking area in the trees just after the final hairpin switchback in a stock 4Runner equipped with off-road tires. There are multiple parking places along the road on the way up but mostly for one - two vehicles. Much of the road is not too bad but there are places with rock outcrops/boulders that have to be negotiated. The Lake Como Road and trail to the saddle between Blanca and Ellingwood are easy to follow. Once the road ends there's an obvious trail marked with cairns. From the saddle its a steep climb up the ridge to the HP. Noticed that the western shore of Lake Como is a popular camping place. Didn't see any campers beyond that. Cellphone reception (AT&T) was fine too from the lake. The upper parking area I drove to is located at: N37.5619, W105.5496. Its sheltered with fire rings and sufficient space for at least half dozen vehicles. Cell phone reception too with AT&T. No water. I was the only vehicle. After you make the hairpin turn go up the road a bit, the parking area is on your right." — fredbrown585 • Sep 22, 2020

"Damn, what a trip! Stories of the Hourglass have stressed me out for years, resulting in me putting off this beast. I finally made a spur of the moment decision to attack a class 4 14er two days before the hike, and was planning on something in the Elks, but this time wildfires shut the plan down. I swear every time I try to go there something happens- last time a trailer full of pigs flipped over and shut down Glenwood Canyon for half a day. Anyways, I flipped the plan on a climbing buddy who was trying to get me to climb some ridges in the Gores and convinced him to do LB, but he was all in for the classic LB to Blanca traverse, a terrifying expert ridge, and more than I bargained for. I fully planned on backing down once we summited LB, bur entertained the thought for his sake. We made the slog to Lake Como late in the afternoon, and set up camp around 830 or 9pm. At 4 AM we woke up and went after it, moving surprisingly fast up the shit gully, across the first ridge and to the bottom of the glass. Much like the trough at Long’s Peak, the Hourglass is sketchy, but the main reason people get hurt here is because of rockfall from above, so when they say no more than one party at a..." — LGH-Dan • Aug 15, 2020

"Incredible climb, though definitely one of the most humbling. Upon arriving at the trailhead there were a handful of several emergency standing idle, and an officer approached my widow and said that a young male climber had died up there, and it was pretty brutal. SARS passed on the rock crawlers on the way up, and then again around 10pm, with body bags in transit. Knowing that people die doing this is all part of it, but seeing the evidence is another story. We reached Lake Como around 10:30pm, and set up camp in the rain. I was only able to fall asleep for maybe 45 minutes, and 5 AM came quickly. The hike in was beautiful- almost looked like Ireland the way the clouds hung low over the green landscape. Blanca was fairly straightforward, but the traverse over to Ellingwood was a different story, with a bunch of route-finding, and some Class 3, even class 4 moves. After Ellingwood it was pretty fun trying to route find and down climb back down to the main trail to meet up with my friend. When all was said and done, I logged about 19 miles and 7000' gain. The Sangre de Cristos are giving me a run for my money! " — LGH-Dan • Jul 29, 2017

"We set off down from the summit of Little Bear and had been hoping that the ridge would be clear of snow and were a little alarmed when we found this to not be the case. The initial descent proved to have some tricky snow covered slab and we broke out the rope almost immediately. The first quarter of the route turned out be the worst of it and we were relieved once we started making some quicker progress on the second half. The route itself was truly a spectacular sustained knife edge with a mix of solid and not so solid rock in an amazing position." — Yosemike • Sep 25, 2013