(Note: For once, one of my trip reports contains real, honest-to-goodness information about a route, albeit mired within the usual logorrhea about my increasingly questionable life choices. For anybody understandably looking to find information about the brief, less strenuous ridge-proper variation between the top of S. Maroon’s 2800′ of Suck and the top of the notch capping the first Class 3 chimney, scroll way, way, waaaaaayyyyy down to the bolded, all-caps section labeled, “WARNING: HERE BE POTENTIALLY USEFUL ROUTE INFORMATION.” For everyone else who apparently needs some good bathroom break or bedtime reading…enjoy!)
I really, really, REALLY wanted to be done with the Elk fourteeners.
Not only are they home to one of the most tedious routes I have ever had the unfortunate necessity of completing (note for listeners that this was in reference to Capitol and linked to that trip report), they’ve also been home to repeated frustrations (this one to Snowmass). Oh, and then there was the whole 50’ fall and subsequent airlift sealing the deal as far as these falling so far behind that they might as well have toppled off the track in the race to become my favorites (I’m pretty sure I don’t need to explicitly state which mountain I was kvetching about here).
Part of the problem with the fall besides the whole confrontation with just how narrow this mortal coil truly is was that it left me with all too much time lying on flat surfaces for the rest of that summer to contemplate what I truly wanted to do once I could use both legs again. I devoted a lot of my wistful thoughts to memories of the backpacking trip I had taken in Rocky Mountain National Park mere days before the accident and dreamt of returning to the gorgeous, well-maintained trails and crisp tundra that made up so much of the terrain above treeline in Colorado’s National Parks, Forests, and Wilderness Areas alike.
I also had fantasies of skiing to occupy my waking hours. The surgeon who had first evaluated my shattered heel in Aspen had told me I could perhaps look forward to skiing greens and blues once wintrier weather rolled in. I shoved my foot into a newly too-tight boot the second day A-Basin was open and made plentiful left turns down their White Ribbon of Death, pleased with myself for getting three runs in in spite of using my left foot as little as I could, in no small measure because that boot was confining beyond what could naturally be expected of a foot-shaped bowling ball.
Fortunately, I had two things going for me: one was a pair of old boots that I’d been too lazy to do anything about, even after they’d gotten a little too comfortable and so compelled me to replace them. Loose as they were, I nevertheless had to get more room put into the left boot to accommodate the swelling in my ankle…but at least I wasn’t altering my newer pair to the point of probable unusability once the swelling was estimated to go down in a few months!
I also had the renewed knowledge that, as limited as A-Basin’s October offerings were and as anxious as I’d been about whether I could make my way down High Noon or not, the fact that I had (albeit not with the most panache I’d ever shown) proved to me once again that skiing was fun! I was thus motivated to keep going and was somewhat encouraged by the slow start to the season allowing me to get comfortable with whatever terrain was open, then progress as Copper and its Ikon fellows gradually increased their percentage of open runs. I ended the season able to ski everything that was open, all the way through the stuff labeled “Extreme Terrain,” and even tripled my checklist of fourteeners skied from the summit.
The obsession with what activities I did want to undertake to keep pushing my foot toward some semblance of normalcy, however, only revealed by contrast how many of my former activities I apparently had no wish to return to. While the summer of agony – er, recovery – clarified for me that I felt I had no choice but to finish the fourteeners, I was convinced that I need not pursue any further elevation-based checklists in Colorado once I finally put the highest of them behind me. And one notable obstacle to putting them in my past tense was that, at no time when I was working on recovery or merely wishing for it, did I entertain even the slightest interest in rock climbing or scrambling.
This was a bit of a problem, as all my remaining fourteeners were Class 3 or 4. And while the spiteful spirit of sticking it to The Man…er, Mountain…was helpful in getting me up and back down Sunlight and Windom 51 weeks after my last attempt at a new fourteener, the guides, ropes, and harnesses that had accompanied me proved to be far more useful in preventing a mental and/or further physical breakdown. But if neither spite nor professional pulling and prodding kindled a love of scrambling that had been tenuous at best pre-Pyramid, some combination of the two did reinstate enough cockiness that I truly believed that through the power of pro, anything was possible.
So it was that, despite having not so much as attempted any of the other Great Traverses before the accident – my partner and I had summited El Diente too late in the day to reach the crux below Mt. Wilson before dark, and even if the Little Bear-Blanca traverse had been on my radar, I would have immediately protested the very idea – I figured I’d be able to ring both Bells in one go by having Aspen Expeditions guide me along what some have considered the sketchiest of the four. Never mind that my prior experiences with Class 5 hadn’t gone so great and were only slightly less shameful than the one noteworthy Class 4 because I’d been roped up, forget that I wasn’t interested in the Bells or any other traverse for the alleged joy of climbing as for a means to an end of saving myself another trip so far from Denver…who cared if my motives were decidedly impure as long as I got that much closer to being done with the Elks!
Given my lack of enthusiasm for the doing rather than the being done portion of the project, it is perhaps unsurprising that I wasn’t particularly heartbroken over the Bells dates being pushed back a couple times due to weather concerns. It’s perhaps even less surprising still that, on the eve of the bluebird-forecasted day in early September amidst a whole other series of non-issues, I had a sudden onslaught of doubts about my strategy. A review of the route description on this very site (14ers.com), what with its mentions of loose rock, severe exposure, and a 5.yikes move or several (note for those with even less interest in and experience with rock climbing than I possess: difficulty within Class 5 is usually broken down further on a scale from 5.0 to 5.15, 5.0 of course meaning even I could likely suffer through it with a lot of help and 5.15 being the sort of stuff Alex Honnold and his ilk knock out before breakfast) did little to help.
Confirming the unhelpfulness was a phone call with my assigned guide, who reinforced the route description’s lack of exaggeration when he asked, “You can climb 5.7, right?”
“In a gym, once,” I squawked before wrapping up the last few details and dragging myself out to my car for the drive to Aspen.
I only had four hours rather than a whole summer this time to ponder my life and whether I wanted to risk it yet again, never mind how unlikely it seemed that I’d get another chance to flirt with the abyss with all the safety measures I’d have in place. Nevertheless, as soon as I met up with my guide in person following the drive plus a few hours of “sleep” in the Maroon Bells lot thanks to the permit I’d managed to score for that day, I felt confident that I wasted no time in sharing the conclusions I’d drawn during my latest mental crisis: “I really, really, REALLY do not want to do the Traverse.”
It was somewhat anticlimactic to have my assigned guide readily agree that the Traverse was not an optimal goal for us that day based on what I had told him about my pace over the phone and what he’d surely heard around the office after my more successful, if almost as joyful as the first, second run at Pyramid the week before. I was a bit taken aback when he proposed North Maroon instead of South, but it was an offer I was happy to take him up on – North was, after all, the Class 4-er of the two Bells.
The only real Class 4 to be had, however, was the infamous chimney. I was immensely happy to be roped and guided for that, as the extra precautions allowed me to rappel instead of a downclimb that likely would’ve edged out the upclimb for Moments I Would Be Happy to Never Repeat, but while I was also happy to put this mountain’s Amphitheater-esque boulderfield in my permanent past tense and couldn’t say I was overly fond of how steep the gullies were, I was pleasantly surprised at how little there was to hate about this peak compared to the mental expectations I’d built up after casually reading through its route description to have an idea what to expect on the descent from the Traverse. The peak turned out to be so unmonumental that it wound up being the only Elk fourteener I summited on my first attempt.
I was obviously relieved that the northern anchor of the Bells turned out to be such a nothingburger that it rated only a paragraph to cap off the novella leading up to it. I was so relieved that, when my guide insisted for reasons I was yet to fully understand that he was fairly certain I’d be able to tackle the southern anchor on my own after studying the route carefully, I seriously contemplated taking advantage of another just-in-case-of-weather Bells permit I’d taken out a mere three days after my trip up North Maroon.
I ultimately decided that three days wasn’t enough to rest an ankle that, avenged as it already was, was still prone to tetchiness after strenuous endeavors of the sort that North Maroon’s steepness qualified it for. Anyway, it was still early September – surely I’d have plenty of time to take advantage of yet another just-in-case permit to bag one last Elk after I finished out Chicago Basin at last!
There’s some line about how the universe makes mockery of the plans of mice, men, and mountaineers. An intense surge of monsoonal-seeming moisture nearly thwarted my Chicago Basin closer, and when it promptly turned to snow in the Aspen area, that was, as far as I was concerned, the end of slipping up and down steep gullies that year, though I was able to use a string of changed-date permits for a delightful backpacking journey through a sunny, uncrowded Four-Pass Loop the second week of October.
I didn’t have too long after gushing over a love of backpacking beautiful trails rekindled in spite of a night in Fravert Basin so uncomfortably cold that I’d “woken” up to frost covering everything inside the tent to have a new distraction from lamenting missed opportunities at the last of both the Unholy Bells Trinity as well as my personal vote for most cursed subrange. Ski season delivered beautifully for many resorts on my passes, and I greatly enjoyed flipping off Pyramid from as many vantage points as my visits to the Aspen resorts would allow.
My skiing adventures culminated in a new record for fourteeners skied, including the first one I skied before earning a winter ascent that also doubled as a nice revenge trip of sorts after a 2019 summer outing where I’d misjudged the snow…and my face had paid the price (this one would’ve been referring to Handies). I even started out this summer of 2023 with Torreys’ summit all to myself before an excellent ski down the standard trail and into the bowl it shares with Grays, a route that seems to not last long after the summer trailhead opens and thus made me doubly pleased with my ability to get it with minimal schlepping over dry trail.
But even snow from a record-setting year eventually melts, and with the atypical dilly-dallying on the part of the monsoons, I reluctantly put the skis away…or at least took them in for a badly needed tune-up as well as adjusting the bindings to fit the newer boots it was time to return to at last.
Testing them out would have to wait, though. Much as I wanted to spend the gorgeously forecasted Saturday, July 22nd, playing with my new setup on one of the many lingering patches of snow dotting the high country, a combination of said amazing forecast, reports of the ever-dwindling nature of those snow patches, and pure, dumb, dogged happenstance leading me to find a Bells permit someone had given up for a weekend day that my longtime partner in crime (climb?) daway8 would be willing and able to make meant I had only one practical option for how to spend the day. I loaded up Burrito, the latest of my long-suffering Subaru Outbacks, and headed out to Aspen on Friday afternoon.
David and I met at the parking area at the end of the Castle Creek Road, the biggest, freest, legal-est, overnight-parking-friendliest, easy-to-find-ing-est Bingo card of a lot we could come up with that was relatively accessible from our ultimate destination 45 minutes away from it. Despite David’s sweet new car-camping setup, he got even less sleep than I did – precisely 0h00m to my maybe 1h55m – so it was just as well that we’d already agreed that I’d be the one driving us up to the trailhead at midnight for the mountain we were actually going to climb that day since I had the permit and kinda wanted the physical act of driving to distract me from how I would have rather been getting ready for just about anything else, up to and including filling out tax forms, that day.
Despite having hiked it three times in 2022, two of them in just as dark conditions (if not quite as early…as I’d apologetically explained to David when I requested our midnight motion-start time, the fact that the Southern Bell had a longer approach and more elevation gain that was on what could best be described as “trail” meant it was likely to take me several hours longer than either of its higher-class fraternal triplets), I’d somehow forgotten just how obnoxious the W. Maroon Creek Trail is in the dark – rocky, lots of ups and downs that I was already mentally groaning about having to come back up much later in the day, none of the spectacular scenery the area is known for because it really helps if your light source extends past the back of your partner’s boots if you want to properly appreciate it.
I was also a bit disgruntled at just how far past Crater Lake the proper turn-off in the proper boulderfield is. And despite having gone up to the top of the 2800′ of Suck in 2020 with no fond memories and therefore having a reasonable idea what to expect, I was somewhat unpleasantly surprised at how quickly it lives up to its nickname. Be not deceived by the alluring obviousness and stability of the first hundred or so feet of handsomely constructed trail leading you away from the madding crowds, for it dissolves all too quickly into a thread of eroded segments and slightly enhanced probable former goat paths beating straight up the eastern slopes with absolutely no regard for human life and its respiration requirements.
And then there were the snowfields. As much as I’d welcomed the snow for skiing, it was of course no small part of the reason I’d waited so long to take advantage of an otherwise bizarrely monsoon-less July to get going on my remaining fourteeners. I’d had no problem with the idea of skiing the eastern slopes – had actually wanted to make that happen, in fact, since that would’ve made me genuinely look forward to at least that part of this peak – but as whatever window I might have had on making such fleeting pleasures be a legitimate option had closed before I could will myself to take advantage, I was stuck trying to thread the briefest but nonetheless most pigheaded lingering remnants of snow with David. We managed to stay off the patch that the night-shrouded trail led us toward, but we did have to skirt awfully close to it.
Choosing that particular path put us a bit off track, as we could only estimate that whatever passed for the actual route up this nonsense was under the snow. David had no problem crossing a low-ish angled but very loose gully on his determined path back toward where our “trail” led us up to the ridge, but as for me…
One of the most…interesting…discoveries I have made post-Pyramid is the sheer unpredictability of what will cause me to have to sit down and do some serious deep-breathing exercises so that I don’t pass out from what is almost certainly not a physical cause but some part of my lizard brain overreacting to some stimulus that shouldn’t be a big deal, rather like a horse freaking out and bucking its rider because that tree root fifty feet away sure looks an awful lot like a snake! It was the same problem I had in the middle of Sunlight’s ramp, when I started getting flashbacks to my first time up Pyramid’s own Four Digits of Suck (though when I repeated the original inspiration for that trigger mere weeks after Sunlight, I had no issues except with how much my lungs were suffering) – I’d known the exposed, scrambly sections could easily be a problem, but this Class 2+ at best non-threat?
And of course much of the problem with an anxiety attack is that it is completely irrational. No amount of, “It’s not that steep,” “It’s hardly the loosest thing you’ve ever come across in the Elks,” or even, “Dammit, your partner just crossed it without even thinking twice about it! Just put your feet where he put his and get across it, dimwit!” is likely to do anything. It’s rather like what my parent friends tell me dealing with toddlers is like: best thing to do about tantrums is sit there calmly and wait for them to subside.
No stranger to these little episodes as he’d been present for Sunlight’s, David quickly figured out something was happening and came back to the edge of the gully, smartly staying out of the landing zone after I did manage to scold myself into getting my act somewhat together to cross over to him – maybe not the worst that the Elks had to offer, but I did manage to set off a slightly calamitous rollin’ rock concert in the process of leaving the should-have-been trivial scene of my latest shame behind and getting onward and up, up, up, oh-for-the-love-of-Cthulhu-why-is-there-so-much up-ward.
When we reached the top of the 2800’ of Suck at last, the sun had come to light the South Ridge adequately enough to assuage some lingering fears as well as sprout entirely new ones. There were patches of snow, sure, but they looked easily avoidable, at least as far as my prior days’ resumed studies of the route had led me to believe. But good golly, Miss Molly, those gullies sure looked godawfully grotesque!
“Best not to study the route too hard until you’re about to do it,” my partner cheerily advised me, and as I settled down to don sunscreen and sunglasses and chug some fluids, I figured he was probably right.
We did give the route a thorough look-over before we set off again, but I trusted David’s reassurances that, despite his utter lack of sleep and my minimal amount, “We got this!” And indeed, the ridge passage, mellow as it was thanks to a path just below the crest, and then the first chimney and notch to its left, which was not so mellow but was also nothing I couldn’t handle, passed with blissful non-noteworthiness.
I tried not to think about how easy the trail – no need for quotation marks for this one – leading to our next set of nemeses, Gullies # 1 and 2, were, for if I did, I would have no choice but to realize that the reason they made for such easy walking was that they were of course going down and that they would thus have to be gone back up on the exit. But no matter; soon enough, we were at a proper vantage to examine and make the best possible visual notes on the capital-G Gullies, and while I fully believed whichever one of the probably-too-many-for-my-anxiety’s-sake trip reports I’d read on the standard route that had stated that bypassing # 1 in favor of going straight up # 2 was the least miserable attack plan, whoever wrote that trip report had not been dealing with the super-late season snow blocking the entrance to # 2.
I super fully believed that, sans snow, # 2 was the way to go all the way, because # 1 offered some pretty steady Class 3 in order to stay out of the loose catastrophe lining its gully gullet. And then the landslide landmine-in-waiting had to be crossed anyway in order to reach the comparatively Class 1 ledges leading to # 2, which also required some careful footwork, but due most likely to hundreds if not thousands of hikers taking that one TR’s advice, there was something resembling a worn-in path leading through the messiness…
…and up to our next landmark of note.
By the time I plopped down next to David at the top of the third, widest, most Pyramid-Suck-like-imho gully to wheeze for air and rehydrate, I was starting to let my superstition a little ways down and buy into what he’d promised me all morning: maybe we did have this. Of course, that was immediately before some confusion on the steep, steppy face below the true summit – some cairns to climber’s right, following a system that had been shockingly reliable for Elk fourteeners, led us up some brief Class 3 ledges before petering out, and while I could spot what I thought looked like a cairn on the rib across the face to climber’s left, David’s tracks indicated he’d gone more or less straight up from where we were standing on his previous times up this peak.
I told him that, inaccessible as my phone was because I didn’t trust my general athletic inability not to slam whichever thigh was hosting the pocket it was in uncomfortably hard against a rock or several, I felt pretty sure the route description had said something about having to cross over yet again to come around yet another corner and find the path of least resistance to the summit from there.
With the lack of any other potential visual “This Way Up!” references directly above us, we elected to follow my gut – not always a trustworthy source of information, except where the locations of greasy diners are concerned – and gingerly mince our way on narrow ledges that also reminded me of Pyramid to the possible cairn. Lo and behold, for once, my gut was right about something that wasn’t a mess of scrambled eggs smothered in green chili, for around the corner framing that rib was another cairn, then another after that, and then…all on mostly Class 2 paths with a couple easy Class 3 moves to be had, all the way to the summit.
I joked about lamenting my skis as we sat down above a cornice that clung determinedly to the east side of the Bells’ highest platform. I also insisted on putting a minimum of one boot on even the slightest of every prominence that thrust up and away off the sit-able part of the summit to make sure I’d set foot on whichever happened to be the highest of them, because as I loudly declared to all the other poor visitors who doubtlessly wanted to marvel at the incredible landscape unfolding in all directions in peace, unlike my super-patient friend David, there was absolutely no f—ing way in Hell, Heaven, Purgatory, the next life, the closest parallel universe, or whatever else might be out there that I was returning up this…oh, wait, better hold off on fully expressing my feelings until we’re back at the car…joyous geological wonder of a peak.
The summit was lovely, however. But of course, even though the forecast was living up to its bluebird promise, a large part of the reason I had wanted to start so Geneva Conventions-violatingly early was that I am fully well aware of how bad I suck at scrambling and descending steep terrain, and I’d vastly preferred to have the headlamp use be at the start rather than the end of the journey. So we picked ourselves up, packed up our gear, and proceeded to putz our way (or at least, I immediately felt like a total putz) back down the peak.
It had been some time since I’d downclimbed Class 3 without a rope, harness, and guide, not since before Pyramid – sure, I’d soloed Kelso Ridge the summer before, but I’d come back down the standard trail due to a combination of potential incoming weather and also having decided that I hated Kelso Ridge with every fiber of my being just about as soon as I’d started up it. I promised David the most glowing of references if he ever got sick of his day job and decided to become a mountain guide and/or the most eloquent of support for his bid to become President of the Neighborhood Association of Heaven or however that was supposed to work, I dunno, I’m Jewish when he not only told me where the best footholds were but also braced himself to catch me in case I managed to bungle the moves anyway for the first few segments of downward scrambling.
The return to the dastardly duo of gullies, however, meant I’d need to re-develop the greater sense of independence my guide for N. Maroon had assured me I was capable of – most certainly, I was now convinced, so that he wouldn’t have to make any more trips up this…delightful…mountain than were absolutely necessary – as David and I were in agreement that the looseness surrounding the scrambles was significant enough that he needed to be under cover before I started moving. And while I can’t say I finally reached our exit ledge with a renewed sense of interest in Class 3+ maneuvers or the cure for all my steepness-related anxieties – all I needed to do was glance slightly farther downhill than where I needed to place my feet in order to see the mass of messiness that could oh-so-easily turn into a dry waterslide over the lip of the seemingly vertical choke just barely damming the bottom of this tribute to the awesome powers of erosion – I will say that (spoiler alert!) I managed to make it down and out of the gully safely without the need to sit down and ride out yet another anxiety attack.
The sense of victory only lasted so long, however. “Stop going uphill,” I started hissing near-continuously to the trail whenever I had enough leftover lung capacity to do so. I almost looked forward to the notch and chimney marking the last patch of universally-agreed-on Class 3 on this mountain, since at least those would be decidedly downhill…though an awful long way down if I had a misstep, my anxiety delightedly reminded me.
David, however, had a different idea. He’d blazed on ahead to the top of the ridge and was one hump ahead of me when I stopped to look down at where the trail seemingly parted ways from where we were to drop down, past a sizable cairn, and into what certainly had to be our notch. I gestured down to it with my trekking pole as I shouted forward, “Isn’t that where we need to go?”
He turned around. “No.”
“You sure?” I explained my theory about the trail, the cairn, the notchiness of where the trail led.
“No, I can see down below it from up here. Too steep and loose to be what we want.”
I could’ve sworn I remembered both notch and chimney as being surrounded by steep looseness – in fact, I was pretty sure that “steep and loose” were the only adjectives one ever needed to apply to this mountain – but I shrugged and shouted, “Okay, as long as where you are doesn’t have any surprise Class 4.”
He explained that he was standing above a short chimney, but it was Class 3 at most, and since it would hardly be the biggest disappointment I’d ever suffered if I substituted that first chimney for one that sucked slightly less of my rapidly dwindling energy, I trudged up along the ridge to join my partner.
The chimney he’d found was much shorter, more solid, and far less notch-y. The rest of the ridge clambering well above where the exit from the chimney we’d come up would’ve led us to was also more solid and no greater than Class 2. When I finally caught up to where he’d sprawled out onto the rock guarding the top of the 2800’ of Suck, he started to apologize, explaining that it really hadn’t looked like our route to him, but I was eager to tell him that, while I was well over 99% sure THE route went where I thought it did, I’d vastly preferred his variation to the point that I planned to recommend it to anyone planning Maroon Peak in the future.
WARNING: HERE BE POTENTIALLY USEFUL ROUTE INFORMATION. I KNOW, I AM JUST AS FLABBERGASTED AS YOU ARE.
So unto all you naive innocents who decided to comb through one of my trip reports in hopes of some practical beta buried deep within the navel-gazing, this I offer unto you: stay ridge proper above the Suck until you see a large cairn just above a distinctly notch-y looking feature, then join the trail from there. Unless you’re one of the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, energetic sorts actually looking forward to the challenge of winding your way through a longer stretch of steep looseness, of course. Otherwise, I’ll be happy to add your praises to the supremely talented daway8 onto my own!
Back on the gateway between the 2800’ of Suck and what I was now feeling a little freer about calling, mentally at any rate, the Dessert Course of Suck, David and I wasted no time in making a solid effort at becoming one with the boulders we were sitting on. David mused, “I wonder why I feel so much more burnt out now than I did after the Traverse. Oh, yeah, that’s right. Precisely zero hours of sleep.”
I agreed and apologized yet again, then added my own supplementary theory: “Probably also doesn’t help that, instead of being able to send it straight up the face like your tracks indicate you did the last time and then go get a further pick-me-up of adrenaline on the Traverse, you were with a literally lame partner who insisted on finding the wussiest, most boring route possible. Adrenaline for me at times due to said wussiness, even less spicy than vanilla for you!”
He got a chuckle after that, then returned to resting his eyes while I took my sweet time sipping my second liter of caffeinated sugar-free flavor-enhanced water and admiring the outstanding beauty of the area. Such remarkable views to be had in the Elks! Such a shame that so many of the most prominent viewpoints blew such literal chunks at times!
Eventually, David and I roused ourselves, realizing that although the forecast was still holding steady on its sunny optimism, it was already past three o’clock and there was that whole sticky wicket about how, backup headlamp for the still-powered headlamp be damned, I really, really, REALLY wanted to get back to Maroon Lake by dark just because. As we lugged ourselves back to our feet, I told David that I would appreciate it if he’d pause every so often to wait for me until we were past the snowfield we’d brushed against that morning, but after that, he was free to take advantage of his long legs and love of downhill trail running.
“Might as well stick together anyway since we’re both dangerously exhausted,” he pointed out chipperly. “Besides, you’ve got the car keys.”
He did get ahead of me, as I’d factored a pace that was only slighter faster going down the Lower Suck than up it because I only had to gag for air every ten steps instead of every five. Even on Class 2 terrain, as long as it’s sufficiently steep, my incredible-for-its-distinctly-lacking sense of balance renders me unable to let gravity take over unless I’ve got the comfort of having sharp metal edges to dig into the slope as needed. And while I was wearing my old microspikes that I’d saved pretty specifically for the sorts of loose dirt-sprinkled slopes on the lower-class sections that seemed just as much an Elk hallmark to me as the mountains’ infamously questionable hand- and footholds on the higher-class ones, there sure wasn’t much bite left to these.
I shuffled my way down to where David was taking advantage of the eye-resting opportunity with the snowfields in view nonetheless. I was pleased when I managed to avoid attacking him via rockslide when my balance gave way where the “trail” intersected a narrow gully – not the same one that had caused such consternation on the way up – and unconsciously invited gravity to join my backside in a short but mighty blast of downward erosive force. He then paused more frequently as I minced down to rejoin where he’d managed to stay on the “trail” better than I had above our snowfield, then led us through a passageway so wide and dry between and under the last of the snow that I find myself still marveling at how we missed it on our ascent even in the dark of night.
Once it was clear that the snow was well behind us, he let his natural pace take over again. I did catch up to him within perhaps 1000’ of meeting the main trail, where he’d full-on curled up on the side of the trail.
“Don’t leave just yet,” I called out as he started sitting up to do exactly that. “I need to give you my car keys so you can take a proper nap.”
“You sure?” he asked drowsily as I fished them out of my backpack and handed them over.
“Yeah. I’ll be fine. It’s gonna suck just as hard as the nickname indicates, and the length of time I’ll be on the main trail isn’t exactly filling me with joy, but I’ll be fine. If I’m not back by midnight, then maybe call Search and Rescue, but I’ll be back by then,” I finished, knowing all the same that even if I had to crawl on bloody stumps all the way back to the trailhead, I would do so, because there was absolutely, positively, indisputably no f—ing way in any realm of the known or theoretical universes that I was leaving any sort of potential asterisk on my summit of this mountain that my neuroticism would demand correction of later on. I then sent him on down while I tossed back the last of my second liter of water, reminding myself that I had brought a third.
Once David had darted sufficiently out of earshot, I started cursing the remaining descent to the main trail with every remaining scrap of energy I could muster. Once I finally met the main trail and downed most of my last liter of water with the sun just barely hovering high enough to light the tops of the peaks across the valley, I started cursing the main trail for its rockiness, uppiness, and stubborn refusal to deposit me at my car at exactly the moment I insisted it do so.
My curses certainly did not subside when the sun set, then last light faded, and then I had no choice but to reach into the waistbelt pocket I’d stashed my headlamp in and pull it out for overtime duty. By the time I finally got back to the trailhead kiosk and started limping my way past all the night owls hoping, I could only imagine, for moon- and/or starlit views of Maroon Lake, I had been reduced to whimpering, “Please get me back to my car?” as I despaired at how much longer this seeming freeway passing the lake seemed than it had any of the other five times I’d come this way.
But at last, I had Burrito in my sights, and a good two and a half hours short of when David had been tasked with calling in the cavalry for a total hiking time of 20.5 hours, no less! Not that the saccharine sweet Southern Bell was quite finished with me yet – as I groaned to David from the two feet of distance I’d somehow put between myself and the driver’s side door mere minutes after ditching my pack and swapping my boots out for toe-friendlier sandals, “This is the first time a mountain’s made me dry-heave in the parking lot after I’m done with it!”
But after all the turmoil in my stomach, understandably agitated as it was from a day of minimal caloric intake so I wouldn’t have to deal with riding a blood-sugar rollercoaster all day and maximal daily dosage of ibuprofen, subsided, I allowed a bit of the tension to slip away as I drove down Maroon Creek Road so I could drive back up Castle Creek. I let a bit more slip away once I pulled into the lowest (and presumably busiest) of Castle and Conundrum’s trailheads, dropped my friend off, and pulled into a space a few down from his own car. I forced myself to eat some mini-cheese crackers – my stomach was paradoxically so empty that it was highly resistant to any intrusion – and then exhaled the rest of the tension to the air around me as I reclined my seat all the way and stretched out in my sleeping bag as much as my quarters would allow…though I did find it necessary to wait for the cycling enthusiasts who’d backed into the space to my right to finish whatever it was necessitated them to shine their own headlamps on the bikes loaded to the back of their car before I could properly sink into sleep.
Oh, how glad I was to be done with that mountain, I thought once David knocked politely on my window the next morning to say that he was ready to take me up on my offer to buy him breakfast at one of several greasy diners along Highway 82 as the least I could do to thank him for putting up with S. Maroon’s nonsense a third time. With apologies to its biggest and maybe only fan Will_E – a skilled fourteener enthusiast whose accomplishments include being a Frozen (a.k.a. winter ascent) Finisher and calling Maroon Peak Colorado’s finest fourteener with a straight face – that peak would easily have surpassed all the rest of the ones I utterly despised, blowing even Teakettle out of the water on my list of Mountains I’d Be Okay Receiving the Bartlett Treatment (for those unfamiliar with Colorado’s thirteeners, Bartlett is a mountain that is on mining territory and, due to the mining activities taking place, is being slowly reduced in elevation)…except that I’d gotten to wake up in my own sleeping bag and waddle outside my car to pee behind some willows at the top of Castle Creek Road the morning after my second go at it, quite dissimilarly to waking up in a hospital bed and having to call a nurse in order to help me to the facilities to make up for the loss of use of my left leg in the hospital at the bottom of the same road as had happened on my first attempt of Pyramid.
In a way, however, my mixed feelings about my Elk finisher are as fitting as my outright grouchy ones about my grand finale of the last range I finished a whole five years ago. I’d found Princeton tiresome and longer-lasting than anticipated, if not overly taxing, which rather nicely summarized my view of the Sawatches. In parallel, I found Maroon Peak steep, loose, excessive, logistically aggravating (in its length from home as well as alllllll those Maroon Bells permits reserved over the past three years), and too close for comfort to my own mortality, though at least on this occasion I managed to avoid needing to rely on luck’s kindness in catching me after I got far too close to the edge.
But I am really, really, REALLY glad my skirmishes with this mountain and its neighbors are over at last. And while I can’t say as I’m stoked about the process of checking off the last of the remaining three fourteeners in the last two remaining ranges, I am somewhat reinvigorated by the relief I can anticipate feeling when I can return to the regions they are located in for strictly pleasurable purposes.
Additional thoughts, two years later
Even I am questioning the necessity of the “additional thoughts” section here. Not only was 2023 only 2 years (although it seems like it should have been only two months) ago, so just how many more additional thoughts could possibly have formulated after so short a time, the original trip report already rambled on for well over 7000 words! And for a write-up of trips that were admittedly an awful lot more back than story, seeing as how nobody needed Search and Rescue on either outing (and in fact, the higher, southern Maroon Peak was so ultimately uneventful that it was my first new unroped fourteener since The Pyramid Incident, although I did consider David’s mental and physical support an absolute necessity worthy of being called guiding, even if I paid him merely in greasy diner food), it sure seems like I already dressed the Bells up in more verbiage than they are surely due. In short (ha, yeah right!), what more could I possibly have to say about North or south Maroon Stupid F—ing Peaks?!
Well, as the most dramatic of Reddit posters on the most drama-attracting of subs are fond of writing, buckle up, because of course I do have more to say…even if it’s only partially to do with the Bells themselves versus their nearest neighbor.
Yep, that’s right. No matter how many times I say that I’m over it, I’m moving on, it’s out of my system, it always comes back to Pyramid Stupid F—ing Peak. You see, when I’m tossing and turning at night (or, even likelier still, procrastinating during waking hours), grappling with the weight of the world’s problems and quickly concluding that there is precious little I can do as just one individual to solve them, I turn instead to issues that are apparently equally hopeless to resolve but seem more personally grappleable (that’s a word now, dammit)…issues like whether Pyramid or Maroon should be my True Least Favorite Fourteener of All Time.
Oh sure, the simpering southern Bell does have that aforementioned lack of capital-I Incidents going for it, not to mention that, while it also netted a mere 50% success rate over my total number of attempts, I did not need to retain the services of a trained, paid, professional guide in order to navigate it on that successful ascent.
In Pyramid’s defense, however (and perhaps I can prove that I’m moving on indeed; I can’t imagine having typed the three words starting that sentence in sequence four or even two years ago!), I may have started in the dark both times, but at least I finished in the light, also both times…including the one that did not require a helicopter for my safe descent. And in contrast to having found absolutely nothing enjoyable about Maroon, even the straightforwardly obvious Valley Trail that I have appreciated in other contexts, I do have to give credit to the ease of passage afforded by the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative’s work on the well-constructed beaut of a trail splitting off the main convergence and ascending through the trees on Pyramid. Plus, there is also that lingering flood of capital-F Feelings every time I do start or end a hike along that Valley Trail, pause before the Deadly Bells sign, and re-read the line about just how rare it is to be given a second chance by either the Bells or their neighbor across the Valley.
But to allow Maroon a rebuttal, a second attempt is not a second chance, at least not in my dictionary, and I wasn’t forced into that second attempt and/or chance, depending on others’ personal definitions, by putting myself into the precarious position that nearly cost me my first (or maybe the first time up Pyramid was already my second chance, depending on where Longs fits into my personal abacus?). Anyway, while I did have the decidedly unnerving experience of setting off some minor rockslides coming up and down Maroon’s 2800’ of Suck, they were fairly limited in distance and even moreso, thankfully, in damage done. I found my one and only descent of Pyramid’s 1000’ of Suck, however, unsettling because of how frequently I could hear rocks coming loose from higher on the mountain, their clattering echoing down, down, down and across as they toppled even more feet than I was descending and into the rock graveyard of the Amphitheater. And while that rockfall had even less of a physical impact on me than Maroon’s had, the sounds of the rapid descent certainly reminded me too much of my own into what I had fully believed would be my own grave.
Ultimately, I suppose the perpetual outcome of this mental grappling is almost as much of worldly importance as it is conclusive: I do respect all members of the Bells trio, just as I do any other fourteener. But as for liking them, ehhhh…clearly the best I can offer is damnation by faint praise. Maroon is awful – even a whole lot of fourteenerers who are not Will_E but enjoy scrambling seem to be in agreement about that – but when all was said and done, Pyramid did leave me with literal and metaphorical scars that I’m increasingly sure I’ll never fully get over.
But just to make sure this conclusion doesn’t end so neatly nor with the bare minimum of already-excess logorrhea, let me throw a little more damnation into the mix for the seemingly forgotten sibling of the Bells Unholy Trinity: North Maroon. The peak I once thought would be my least favorite of the group, the one for which I facepalmed when LiDAR’s elevation surveys started shaking up The Lists of fourteeners and thirteeners alike back in late 2021, with one of its shake-ups being the removal of North Maroon from its longstanding unranked status and upgrading it in rank. As I had yet to summit any of the Bells group before 2022, I was a little distraught – summiting only the Real, a.k.a. ranked, fourteeners, was good enough for a number of listchasers; up until LiDAR’s revelations, I could have convinced myself that I could be okay with becoming one of them and thus perhaps dodge such an obnoxious-sounding obstacle as North Maroon!
As it turned out, however, most of always-would-have-been-personally-undodgeable-let’s-face-it North was uncomplicated enough that, while I’m not exactly gobbling up available Maroon Bells parking permits to go climb it again, it is the lone third of the group that I could conceivably be arm-twisted into repeating, albeit with a lot of caveats, such as my refusal to repeat the chimney unless roped again (I would be willing to search for the looser but less technically complicated Class 3 workaround that I’ve heard exists, however).
Still, when all is said and done and over and moved-on-from, I believe there are much finer places to be in the rugged Elks than their fourteeners…and in my humble opinion, there are much finer ranges in which to climb fourteeners than the Elks, so I was and am still really, really, REALLY glad to have finished with that range – and not as my last, to (hiking) boot!
Which is, of course, still not to say that I was super stoked about the fourteeners I had remaining in the almost-as-rugged ranges I had left. But with only three peaks left in total, I was solidly in the homestretch…never mind how much I wanted to consult a personal thesaurus so that I could find a word less strongly associated with my very first Incident peak of Longs.
Of Mice and Mountaineers 
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