8/26/07 – Williams Mtn. South, William BM, "Williams Spires," Williams Mtn. & Williams Mtn. North – Williams Mountains Traverse

14.3 miles, 5670'


In late summer from 2001-2004, Erin and I climbed routes that were at the limits of our endurance, and I was beginning to think this would become an annual event for us at the end of summer. In 2005, you could say that we "celebrated" early with the Triple Crown route in Rocky Mountain National Park, but in 2006 we were in Pittsburgh and couldn't continue with the tradition. I wasn't thinking about resuming our old practice when I was making plans last week with John Kirk, but in retrospect, the Williams Mountains Traverse was very much in spirit with our end-of-summer tradition of spending a long, hard day in the mountains. On Saturday, we had the privilege of climbing with Kirk Mallory up his final of the 584 13ers, Peak 9. During that outing, John and I were talking about our plans to climb in the Williams Mountains the following day, and Sarah Thompson and Dominic Meister said they'd like to come along. A fivesome seemed appropriate for tackling the five 13ers of this western spur of the Sawatch Range that lies at the heart of the Hunter-Fryingpan Wilderness.

All of us except John car-camped at the Lost Man Trailhead. John arrived Sunday morning as we were getting ready, and we hit the trail at 5:30 a.m. We hiked the Lost Man Trail briefly before making our left turn onto the Midway Pass Trail. We had precious little beta on this route, but we went with Hakan Bergstrand's recommendation that we traverse the peaks from south to north, so that we wouldn't have to backtrack as often to circumvent the major obstacles along the ridge. The trail led us to a small tarn as day broke over Grizzly Peak to the south and the Elk Range to the southwest. Soon after, we left the trail to begin our ascent up Williams Mountain South's gentle slopes. Now's as good a time as any to tell you that I've monkeyed around with the naming convention in this range. There are simply too many "Williams Mountain Souths" for my liking on Garratt and Martin's list. Williams South C will be referred to as Williams Mountain South. We'll get to the other two later in the report. It was 7:10 as we crested the ridge just east of the summit, and I had a humorous little moment with my wife. She asked me, "What's that pointed peak in the distance?" probably thinking that we should add it to our list. I couldn't help but laugh as I replied that she was looking at the fourth of the five peaks we were aiming to climb. We had a long way to go!

After fueling up on South's summit, we embarked on the longest of our four traverses of the day, a 1.7 mile ridge climb that wends its way north to the second-highest peak in the Williams Mountains. It was here we discovered that John's pace has become much quicker in the last couple of months. He sped down the first peak and would remain ahead of the group for much of the day. He even took in some extra credit while doing so. We had a bit of scrambling to do to attain the 13,122' subpeak along the way. We were putting some distance on Williams South, but this ridge was proving time-consuming. It took us nearly two hours to reach the second peak, where John found a benchmark. An actual verifiable name for one of these peaks! The marker read "WILLIAM," so the peak that had been designated Williams South A will be called William Benchmark in this report. The descent from William BM was initially easy-going as we gazed toward our remaining peaks for the day, but we knew that near the next saddle, things would get more interesting.

We reached a downclimb into a notch, and there, John decided to take the low road. Dominic was busy exploring a grassy ramp and announced that it would go, so the rest of us followed. There were a bunch of obstacles to surmount, pathways to follow, and towers to bypass. It was a load of fun! We stayed on or near the ridge crest until we finally reached a spot where we had to drop down a gully about fifty feet. We climbed back on the crest and began the ascent to next subpeak. We saw John already near the top. It's this spot that leads me to dub Williams South B, "Williams Spires". The peak's two summits appear as jagged twins, and there's a 200' drop between the two. We reached the top of the subpeak at 10:30, and all of us eagerly anticipated the final scramble to the Spires' beautiful true summit.

John led the charge, scrambling up, around, and beside fantastic, blocky boulders. As we got higher, we realized that a gully that had looked inviting earlier was in truth a junky mess. We scrambled around to the right and hiked up some grass that took us higher to the exciting summit. We could see two people over on Williams Mountain, the next peak north of us – such a surprise to see someone else climbing out here today. We began the descent almost immediately because the weather was beginning to look uncertain. Initially, the downclimb went well, but then we cliffed out. Sarah eventually found the way down some chunky boulders and then down some steep, grassy ledges. From there, Sarah climbed onto a narrower ledge in an attempt to stay higher on the peak with Dominic following. I watched her climb and didn't like the way a couple of steps looked, so I proceeded down the grassy ledges further, hoping that they wouldn't cliff out before we could begin to climb back to the ridge crest. This grass was steep! I can't remember wanting to grasp clumps of grass as belays before, but here it felt comforting. I climbed up one ramp, but it ended at a steep drop. John explored another lower possibility, and found a gully that finally dropped us the rest of the way down. Looking back at "Williams Spires," it almost seemed impossible that we had just descended it. It had been strenuous, and I could feel that I was starting to run out of energy fast. We climbed up a grassy slope to the saddle where we met back up with Sarah and Dominic.

The clouds were becoming darker, but still nothing was happening. All of us wanted to continue. Williams Mountain, the highest peak in this small range, was next. It was my true goal for the day. If I could make it to here, I thought, I'd be satisfied. The Williams highpoint was the meat – finally, another prominence peak! – Williams North would be gravy. We passed around the left side of a tower that immediately rears up, and we realized that we were not at the saddle mentioned in our route description for the high peak. We were met with a steep, loose downclimb to bypass a tremendous rock rib before we could climb to the next saddle. I was already uneasy about how loose things looked back here when Dominic, who was thankfully in the lead, sent a big pile of rocks tumbling down the mountainside. That was enough for me. Erin and I turned back so that we could come around on the other side of the ridge: a safer, but now longer, alternative. Ironically, it was just as we began our pursuit of this safer course that one of us got hurt. There was a flat, table-top rock that all of us had trodden on earlier, but when I stepped across it, I was the last person it would support. Erin set foot upon it, and the rock split in two, bursting apart, and falling to either side of a heretofore unseen pointed rock that had been supporting it. Erin dropped to one side of the pointed rock, but she banged her leg hard. You should see the bruise! We were thankful that nothing more serious had happened in this freak incident. After a minute or so, Erin was ready to get moving again.

We reached the high basin east of the ridge, and we bumped into the pair whom we had seen on the summit of Williams Mountain earlier. They, too, were surprised to see someone else out here and were curious how we heard of the area. They gave us some pointers on the climb, we feebly tried to describe how we'd come down "Williams Spires," and we parted ways. We passed around a rock rib, and peering up the gully, we saw John waving his poles at us from the saddle. I figured they'd be faster than us, and I was glad that they waited. Erin and I grunted our way up this steep, loose 300' slope and reached the saddle gasping for breath. That scree took a lot out of me. The 600' remaining to the summit would put the finishing touches on kicking my ass! There was some scrambling and some boulder-hopping; it was fun, but I was too sapped of energy to truly enjoy it. Near the top, the ridge narrowed, and some of our moves became more exposed. Erin liked one where she was hugging a rock to go along. The crux fourth-class move is at the very top. It's a bit of a tight fit, but with Erin's flexibility, she climbed right through it with ease. My attempt was more awkward, and I popped up, relieved to see the summit just a few feet away.

I felt I was finished. The traverse to Williams North had been billed as the toughest climbing that we'd face. I felt that with my energy levels so low, I had no business downclimbing class 3 and 4 pitches. John and Sarah were scoping out the route north, though, and I had to find out what they were seeing. I got closer, and they proposed that we descend down to the lower basin to avoid the ridge entirely. This appealed to me because we could skip this tough ridge, and we would have a way to bail if the weather finally turned on us. Erin and I began to follow the rest of the group towards Williams North. It became apparent that we couldn't descend to the basin directly as originally suggested, but it was also becoming clear that John, Sarah, and Dominic were doing an outstanding job routefinding. We weren't on very difficult terrain at all! Some of it was loose, yes, but it was shaping up to be the easiest of all the traverses we'd made that day. Lower on the ridge, we came around the left side of one tower, and the right side of another. Before long, we were staring up at the final grassy slopes that had looked so inviting all day long. Erin and I were tired and now well behind the rest of the group, but we wouldn't be denied. I was taking rest steps mere feet from the summit, but at around 2:00, I finally made it. This was the first time Erin and I had climbed five ranked 13ers in one day, capping a productive August. Never before had we climbed so many peaks in one calendar month. Also, John hit a major milestone on Williams North, his 200th 13er!

One more obstacle to overcome: we had to climb up and over Williams Mountain's east ridge for the most efficient line back to the trailhead – and we had to do it without water. Erin and I had run through our respective three liters. We descended Williams North back to the saddle and then dropped east into the high basin that forms part of Fryingpan River's headwaters. We hiked on grass at the base of cliffs, the lowest portions of Williams' tremendous east face before we entered a field of immense boulders, the remains of a once greater face on Williams. Williams North looked beautiful from here. I was thankful to see John and Sarah snap pictures here and there, because in my weary state, I needed the reminder to take photos. It was exhausting to navigate the boulder field and climb to the crest, but finally we were done with elevation gain for the day. We dropped south into the next basin and began our trek down to the Lost Man Trail.

The vegetation was lush – what a place this must be in July! – but was in its transition to more subtle autumn colors. Summer is fading fast! We hiked around a tarn with the lowest of the 13ers, UN 13,001, towering across the valley. We found the creek draining the basin, and we all took the opportunity to replenish our water supplies courtesy of Sarah's iodine tablets. It was approaching 4 o'clock, and John decided to turn on the afterburners to get back to his family sooner. The rest of us were happy to take a slower pace down to the valley below, weaving through willows before entering the trees. We found the Lost Man Trail, which was conveniently on the west side of the creek, with ease and then began the gentle 4 miles back to the trailhead. I hiked alone for much of the way out, taking it all in, silently observing passing landmarks. I knew I was getting close when I saw Lost Man Reservoir. This reservoir actually feeds Grizzly Reservoir, which in turn tunnels under the Divide and dumps extra water into Lake Creek, which then goes on to Twin Lakes, which I believe Colorado Springs obtains via the Arkansas. That's quite the journey that some Williams Mountain water takes!

I passed an angry squirrel and then the turnoff for the Midway Pass Trail. The loop was now tied. Just a little bit further... at last! I sat down on a rock in the parking lot and shut my eyes. After maybe five or ten minutes, I heard Erin, Sarah, and Dominic coming up the trail. It was a few minutes before 5:30, so we had all come in under 12 hours. I accepted Sarah's offer of a cold Labatt's with all my remaining vigor, and we all just sat around for a while reflecting on the day. Then we packed it up and had dinner together at Coyote Cantina. It rained quite a bit along the drive home, and Erin and I got back to our apartment, utterly exhausted, at 10:00.