Ascent of Palmer Peak on 2018-10-28| Others in Party: | Dan Connors
----Only Party on Mountain | | Date: | Sunday, October 28, 2018 | | Ascent Type: | Successful Summit Attained | | Peak: | Palmer Peak | | Location: | USA-Colorado | | Elevation: | 12517 ft / 3815 m |
Ascent Trip ReportIt is an easy journey down to the saddle of this peak that I see from 285 and wanted the "extra credit" Snow conditions were yucky on the east side but no snow on the west slopes. If we were smart and we were not...we would have backtracked to the saddle as the climb from the col to the peak was micro-talus (rocks about the size of a softball and well locked and flat) so the climb is easy class 1. All day our climbing was tundra grass and small talus so we were lulled into thinking that we could go down the south slope but soon we realized it would take us too low and then have to re-climb hundreds of feet so we bailed and dropped over the west slopes which had no snow but awful steep and moving talus!
Fortunately, once to the ravine below, the talus challenge was over. We contoured around the ravine on mostly tundra and made our way through snow packs and then headed to the saddle right of the point we named Arnold Peak which shows up on the USGS map as 12282. The route down from there we followed mostly Zack Lewis GPS. My GPS track collected too many points so I could load it in here for reference. The trip home was up and over several hills and around several hills and to avoid snow, we ended up measuring over 400 feet of re-climb getting back
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| Summary Total Data | | Total Elevation Gain: | 667 ft / 202 m | | Total Elevation Loss: | 425 ft / 129 m | | Round-Trip Distance: | 3.5 mi / 5.6 km | | Grade/Class: | 1 up 2+ down talus | | Quality: | 5 (on a subjective 1-10 scale) | | Route Conditions: | Unmaintained Trail, Open Country | | Ascent Statistics | | Gain on way in: | 242 ft / 73 m | | Distance: | 0.3 mi / 0.5 km | | Route: | follow obvious saddle | | Start Trailhead: | saddle between peaks 12275 ft / 3741 m | | Descent Statistics | | Loss on way out: | 425 ft / 129 m | | Gain on way out: | 425 ft / 129 m | | Distance: | 3.2 mi / 5.2 km | | Route: | down talus slope and cross country | | End Trailhead: | car | Ascent Part of Trip: Silverheels
Complete Trip Sequence:
Total Trip Gain: 4211 ft / 1283 m Total Trip Loss: 2107 ft / 643 m |
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