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South Arapaho PeakNovember 22, 2008 - Southeast Ridge![]() No alpine start, the trip to the trailhead would only be two hours or so, if the road was open . . . as the start of the climb up South Arapaho is the terminus of the road leading to the Fourth of July Pass trailhead. It was mid November and by all rights the road should be snowed in for the winter. But this had been a dry year so far and the road mostly traverses the south facing side of the valley. Just one week before, I drove to the summer 4wd trailhead for Mount Elbert and I had a hunch this road might also be open. If not, there was always the option of the American Alpine Club's new museum in Golden.
We hefted the packs and walked to the trailhead to start the climb. The first leg of the trail is the developed path to Fourth of July Pass, three miles distant. We were not going all the way to the pass but only to the Fourth of July mine, I was back up and walking by the time G turned the corner and we hiked on up to the old mine site. The whole of the trail was icy or snowy, even where the trail broke from the trees and skirted the side of the hill, working its way up to the pass. The mine really is little more than a muck pile and some equipment remnants but it marked our turn off toward the peak proper. The trail we now The formal route to the saddle is a winding path but this was a winter climb so we made a straight line course for the saddle, at least as straight as one can get when climbing over alternativng patches of grass and talus. The ground was hard frozen and I followed the steps of a solo climber who had taken the same path a day or so earlier. The climb to the saddle is long, I figure about 1500 vertical feet thought it does not look that high from the bottom. Trust me, climb to the top and you will buy into every one of those 1500 feet. The From the crest, I stuck with the path of climbers before me and made it to what I thought was the summit. Again, a false high point as this was but a sub summit separated from the true summit by a short drop and additional climb to the actual summit. The rocks were now all coated with wind blown snow, the frozen fingers of which were extending from the rock by the action of We did not stay on the summit long but ate a few ceremonial gummy worms, left one for Pachamama, and took to our feet to descend. We tracked back over the subsidiary summit and back down the ridge proper to arrive at the top of the saddle, about 700 vertical feet below. The footing was not bad but the winds were making for some
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