Rejected on SIlverheels

Even though I felt Longs Peak, last August, was epic this trip was epic on a different level, e.g. the number of less then good (bad) decisions made during the course of the hike.

Silverheel's is just a 13er, as some would say, but after hiking/climbing about 12 14ers, a few more then once, this "13er" brought the reality of being in the backcountry front and center.

Marlys had wanted to go up Silverheel's since a drive into Breck via the Camp Como road last summer. Since we had not started on the "14er a week" goal yet due to the snow, I kept an eye out on the trip reports from Silverheel's to see if it might be the first of the year.

So you are probably asking yourself why would this one be anymore accessible then the 14ers after all it is only 180' below 14K. The trip reports I read seemed to indicate a little less snow, but TR are pretty subjective to the skills of the person reporting. It seemed like a possible and after the fact in going back and reviewing them it appears that I probably took the good items into account and overlooked the bad one.

Another item that became apparent during the planning for the hike was that there is a lot less information available on 13ers, then 14ers, probably due to the lower number of people going up them. This means that the route info and actual on hill trail markings is much less then that of a 14er.

Until I get my mountain mojo back I think I will be sticking to 14ers, but someday I will need to try Silverheel's again.

1. Bad Decision: Looked at planning info through some pretty rosy glasses.

While driving up CO 9 to Fairplay we all commented on the peak snow cover.

2. Bad Decision: Did snow stop accumulating on peaks less then 14K? Probably not.

Heading for the trail head (that may be a little grandiose) I had already pictured the parking area and where the trail would start, because I have driven this road so often. Even though the directions said that the trail head was 2 miles down from Hoosier Pass and the starting point I had envisioned was only about 1.5miles.

3. Bad Decision: Assumed the trail head instead of following directions.

Off we went into the trees duly heading to the south for 500yards then turning east toward Beaver Ridge. Gee there seemed to be a lot of snow around.

4. Bad Decision: When you start at the wrong place, guess what happens to every turn after that...right probably no correct.

As we broke out of the trees, think we had just topped Beaver Ridge, we notice what seemed to be an even higher ridge to the SE and a even taller peak behind it.

And there still seemed to be a lot of snow, which due to the early hour it was still frozen and we could walk on top of it, but I WAS thinking that as the day warmed this would be post-holing territory on the way back down. My thinking had not totally shut down. I also was wondering about the snow amount previous folks had mentioned.

5. Bad Decision - Cascade Effect: We were actually on the south side of the Hoosier Ridge, instead of the NW side of Beaver Ridge. But we decided to push on to the saddle between the two ridges anyway.

There was quite a bit of detouring as we went around snowfields and a cornice debris field (avalanche), but we made it to the saddle 3 hours after leaving the car. We now had views that matched the pictures on the route information. We could also see that Beaver Creek was full of snow.

I could also finally see some tracks below the power lines heading for the shoulder ridge on Silverheel's. It went right through the snowfield by the power tower in the left lower center of this picture.

We all sat and looked at this and made the first good decision of the day...lets bag it, too much snow and not equipped for it (no snowshoes). Also be were now on the north side of Beaver Ridge so we could go back by the direction in the route info.

Every good decision is followed by a bad one, why doesn't it work the other way too.

6. Bad Decision; The route seemed to go along the north side of the ridge and had a major scree/talus field to cross. It also looked like we would need to enter the trees on the north side...read less sun, more snow, unsettled bad footing.

Off we went.

These smiles did not last long, as after entering the scree/talus we realized we were in a bad position.

The footing was sliding, it was steep and the run out, if you did slide did not look good.

After crossing this field we re-grouped and though maybe we could head down into the drainage via what looked like bare ground around the some of the trees.

At this point I had serious concerns about where we were, where we would go, and if we had the energy to get out of here. A scary situation.

I was also second thinking the gear that I had off-loaded from my 24 hour pack to lighten the load, e.g. rope.

After starting down this path, I asked the rest of the party to wait and I went down to the trees to see if it was actually viable.

It took me about 2 minutes to know it wasn't, and that we/I needed to stop these bad decisions that just seemed to be getting us into more and more of a situation with no retreat .

I went back and said that this was not going to work and that we should retrace the way we came in.

This meant going back through the scree/talus, and around the north side of the drainage.

The snowfield would be soft, but we knew where it went. I also had tracked it on my GPS so we could stick close to the route we took up and where we came out of the trees.

The snowfields looked bigger then they did coming up.

Tempers were beginning to wear, the wind had come up, and the smoke from the AZ fires had moved in heavily.

Once we got back around the drainage and looked at where we had be headed it indeed scary as it was only going to get worse.

After 6.5 hours we came out of the snowfields and the drainage at the road we should have been on in the first place.

It was a few hundred feet down from where we went in and it would have put us on Beaver Ridge outside of the drainage and away from the major scree field, but there still was a lot of snow.

Being the lead bad decision maker I apologized to the group, dropped my pack and made the walk up the road to retrieve the car.

I felt very lucky.