East Face of Mt. Taylor, RMNP

We climbed the east face of Mt Taylor Saturday, April 17, 2004. Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, Colorado
Since 1994, when I put up a new route there, just left (west) of the Central Buttress, I have dreamed of returning to do the First Winter Ascent of the route. Although poised for a March ascent, time ran out before I could round up a climbing partner. But a few weeks later I found it was everything I expected and a whole lot more.
We left the trail head at 4am. Made the 6 mile approach on skies. We started climbing in blue skies at 8am with a 70m rope, small rack, plus 4 pins. The route gets steep right off the ground with a few very difficult mixed moves. Just trying to get on to the long right leaning bench in the center bottom of the face proved bold. I stepped right and around a leaning roof and fins and found 2 more long leads ascending steep wet unconsolidated snow and continued up through the middle of the snowy face. Next pitch worked right on a bit of a traverse and brought us to the apex and plumb fall-line of the Central Buttress and was a fine thin mixed pitch. Ascending directly up and trending a bit left, it seemed direct but crossed steep (70º) slopes with very little pro, maybe one piece per 50-70’, across unnerving, unbonded, TG snow. That was followed by another mixed pitch and getting more steep and difficult. The last 3 pitches just got harder, more serious, and scarier. By now it was 3pm and little did we know the exit pitches would take 6 hours! The snow got horrendous; the wall/ledges were getting vertical and the rock so compact that pro was dam near non-existent. The last pitch on the summit headwall was hell. I exhausted myself wandering about seeking a do-able exit. I down-climbed and traversed to the right, holding shy of going under hanging gargoyles of plastered snow on a vertical face. Then wandering far left of the belay seeking an exit, only to find butt-ass smooth rock. I attempted to go straight up on more snow blobs that had melt-ice finish on one side, but it was like WI-6+, and overhanging. Just too steep and scary for me. I spied a minor relief that rose up and right and Dougald got stuck with the mop up duties. It was as hard as anything we’d ever climbed but at least took pro. He got bombed in the face by dislodging some ice, got worked on the extremely difficult terrain, and at the very last twinkle of light, at dark, pierced the final rock arête 20’ below the actual summit! A bit of snow trough digging and he was done. I followed by headlamp and topped out at 9:30pm.
We wandered off to the right for half a mile and located the north couloir. It was getting cold and the surface snow had created a crust, which we had to front point down for 1000’. Then we were able to plunge step, but got our shins wrecked by the breakable crust. By then the weather had moved in and we had to locate our packs in the mini blizzard, about midnight. Add one rappel into the lower couloir and then hike down to locate our skies. The ensuing exit ski wasn’t at all fun or fast. The headlamps only made the blowing snow look like playing asteroids in a tunnel. And the breakable crust turned to sticky mashed potatoes. To me that meant lower leg injuries at this 3am fatigue level, so I added those 12 pounds to my pack and walked a mile. The final ski out, down from Glacier Gorge junction was the usual Luge run, still avoiding the asteroids.
Nothing like testing your body, eh? Alls well that ends well.
We did have to call the NPS & PD to ‘check out’ since a wife unit had called us in.
Sunday was shot. I think we both were in our respective dog houses a little with the Mrs. Freeze thaw cycles are in full bloom in RMNP and I would expect the mixed lines are coming in. I returned to the vicinity last weekend for an attempt on Womb with a View. The first 4 pitches were good, albeit difficult. We stood just 20’ below the womb crux and knew we could aid thru it but it was 4pm and time for beer.