Region
Highlights
- Little Bear Peak is a Colorado 14er in the Sangre de Cristo Range.
- Little Bear is just southwest of Blanca Peak, one of the highest and most topographically prominent of the Colorado fourteeners.
- While Little Bear itself has little more than the minimum 300 feet of prominence to qualify as a separate peak, it is notable for being one of the most technically difficult and dangerous of the fourteeners to climb; its standard route is known for being exposed to rockfall.
- The connecting ridge to Blanca Peak is one of the four great Colorado 14er traverses.
Latest climbs
"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
"Hiked into Lake Como the day before and set up camp. We climbed up to the ridge in the approach gully that seemed to have the biggest concentration of snow in the area. We worked our way up to the hourglass and coordinated with another person climbing Little Bear so we could all climb it together to avoid any rockfall accidents. The hourglass had ice flowing down the center but we were able to avoid it by climbing to the left on the pretty solid rock. About half way up we discovered a huge core shot in the fixed lines that were being held together by 4 core strands. Beware if using the fixed lines because all the falling rock seems to shred them pretty bad. We accidentally climbed the wrong peak at first and I regret not summiting Little Bear South being so close but we had a full day ahead of us and it didn't seem important at the time." — Yosemike • Sep 25, 2013
"This was a very satisfying climb for my party. We had put a lot of planning and effort into doing it right. We continued on to Blanca in good style. Sadly as we were descending we learned that a man had fallen to his death on the same route we came up just a few hours later. There is nothing "little" about Little Bear, especially the risks. " — ChrisMeloche • Sep 6, 1998