Region
Most climbed route
Highlights
Routes
1 summit • 18.2 mi • 5,504 ft gain • 11 hr 24 min
1 summit • 4.1 mi • 2,453 ft gain • 7 hr 34 min
Latest summits
"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 were off at 4:45am. The line of headlamps in the switchbacks above reminded of other alpine starts, but this time there wasn't any snow. 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.
Then upon us was 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 was after, but this wasn't our exp..." — scott • Jul 28, 2021
"Capitol Peak, the so-called “hardest 14er” has eluded me for years, sending me back home multiple times through wildfires, floods and even an overturned trailer of pigs shutting down Glenwood Canyon. Finally, my car was at the trailhead. We battled relentless cold, soaking rain and trails of flowing mud to reach our camp below Capitol Lake, then hastily pitched our tents and jumped in our sleeping bags, trying to regain some morale and feeling in our appendages. The weather finally broke in the afternoon, long enough for us to partially dry out and not spend the night hypothermic, and the next morning the sun rose as we reached a frost-covered K2. Luckily the rising sun burned off most of the remaining ice on the SW ridge as we climbed across the knife’s edge and up the wild terrain thereafter, reaching the summit at 8:30AM. You didn’t make it easy, but thanks for finally letting me up ol’ Cap. " — LGH-Dan • Aug 30, 2020