"WOW. Hard to describe this "great traverse" of the Maroon Bells without writing a novel, so I'll sum it up briefly- Godawful long and steep ascent, awesome class 3-4 ridge scrambling and route finding in a rock climbers playground (lots of variations), with a few class 5 moves, then another godawful long and steep descent. This was my first time leading a group across some gnarly class 4-5 , and I had never been on it before, but this was absolutely amazing. This peak taught me a lot about myself, and that is saying something! " — LGH-Dan • Sep 7, 2021

"WOW. Hard to describe this "great traverse" of the Maroon Bells without writing a novel, so I'll sum it up briefly- Godawful long and steep ascent, awesome class 3-4 ridge scrambling and route finding in a rock climbers playground (lots of variations), with a few class 5 moves, then another godawful long and steep descent. This was my first time leading a group across some gnarly class 4-5 , and I had never been on it before, but this was absolutely amazing. This peak taught me a lot about myself, and that is saying something! " — LGH-Dan • Sep 7, 2021

"This is my second time using the gpx upload feature- so much better, at least for the ascent portion. Not sure what happened after that. Anyway, my Sept 1-3 Maroon Bells reservations I had to make back in April got cancelled due to the only stormy days in August, but I was luckily able to snag a spot in my friends car who was heading down a few days later. We camped out on some piece of pavement off of Castle Creek Rd, broke down at 3ish AM, drove to Maroon Lake TH and dragged our way too heavy bags up to basecamp at Crater Lake (not much water there btw). It was a long long haul, and I was dragging my a$$ for most of it. We definitely did some extra work in places but made up for it with shortcuts. After ascending up the dreadful bowl sides, we made a line for the summit from the ridge. This peaks is so damn cool. Lots of Indiana Jones type moves, stretching out across catwalks and ledges, and jumping over drops. Lots of goats at the top waiting for people to pee. We got down about 3-4pm Id guess and rested up for the bells traverse the following day. " — LGH-Dan • Sep 6, 2021

"5 years ago an early season snow forced us to abort a trip to Capitol and every waking moment since then I've been thinking about Capitol. OK, well that's a huge exaggeration but just seemed like a good throwaway intro. After another piss-poor night of sleep in the tent (0 min? need to figure this out), ate a bag of Pop Tart crumbs/dust and we were off at 4:45am. The line of headlamps in the switchbacks above reminded me of other alpine starts, but this time there wasn't any snow. After a brisk ascent we de-layered at the saddle and headed down and across into the infinite talus beatdown. Having recently lost our buddy Phil to a work call, a new Phil from CT temporarily philled in the gap and accompanied us -- at least until the... ...Fabled Knife's Edge. I went first, walking for a bit before "Ridin' the Pony" when the footholds disappeared. At first I actually sat on the Knife Edge right into my butt crack -- not recommended. Instead, adopted a kind of push-up position shimmy across the non-foothold sections. A bit airy, a bit of adrenaline, but not too bad. People down in camp the day before had said that the Knife's Edge was just the beginning, that the hardest stuff ..." — scott • Jul 28, 2021

"Uggh pretty much zero minutes of sleep after a big day yesterday climbing Snowmass and motoring over Buckskin Pass in face of thunderstorms. Gotta figure out a more comfortable sleeping setup. Despite this felt fine after a smashed Pop Tart in the early am darkness. We set out at 5:45am on the short walk from Crater Lake to the Pyramid Peak climber's path. Huge gratitude to the CFI for constructing this trail up through the first 1000' vert of scree slopes -- massive energy saver. At the end of the path, the talus-filled ampitheater provided some good-natured tedium before the steep/loose 1000' vert gully to the 13,000' saddle. At this point finally we were in position to tackle one of the most amazing routes of the 14ers. The classic Northeast Ridge route proved to be a masterwork; kudos to the mad genius who pieced this puzzle together. We lived cairn by cairn as we scrambled over boulders, hugged ledges, lept gaps, and climbed the crux greenish rock. The last few hundred vert was a tiramisu of cliff bands that you weaved back and forth and up and over like a rat scurrying through a 14er maze. Felt great to stand on top of the pyramid by 10:45am. The ridiculous vertical..." — scott • Jul 26, 2021