Grizzly Peak is Colorado’s highest thirteener, formerly thought to be a fourteener but demoted after new surveys made the mountain twelve feet short. I wonder how many hundreds or even thousands fewer ascents the peak sees due to those twelve feet. Regardless, Grizzly is known as a great climb in an area of the Sawatch range which is uncharacteristically rugged. Grizzly has been on my “to-do” list for years, but I hadn’t yet gotten the chance to give it a go. With a powerful late spring storm poised to drop a few inches or more over the weekend, we nearly decided to bag it but in the end decided it was worth a try. We were certainly glad we did…

Photo from Independence Pass, Memorial Day, 2006
Brittany and I were joined by Jarrett Luttrell and Kim Ross, and as we headed up Independence Pass from Aspen, we found ourselves in a blinding snowstorm of the Star Wars variety. At the campsite:

We awoke the following morning with a few inches of new snow, and some continued light snowfall. Needless to say, it was beautiful:

The hike up valley quickly broke out into meadows and we were able to enjoy the views of this area, which most of us hadn’t been to. Jarrett and I both commented that it felt like one of the first trips of the fall, rather than one of the last trips of the spring. It even smelled like fall. Kim, riding high on expectations:

The sun came out momentarily and gave us a great view of our objective. The actual peak is slightly behind, while the Grizzly couloir remains mostly out of view on the right, tucked up against the cliffs.

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