We arrived at the trailhead where we could see the Peak in the distance. We gathered up our camping and hiking gear and headed in. It was a 6.5 mile hike with a gain of 3,000' in elevation.
The hike in provided many beautiful views. It also offered some funny views of Dave while hiking. Ha!
It took about 3 hours to hike in to Capitol Lake. Once there, we were surprised to find absolutely no one else around. We had the entire lake area to ourselves!
We looked around the area before settling on what was a perfect campsite.
From our camp we had a spectacular view in every direction. In one direction was the lake, and above it the peak. The ridge extends to the left of the peak.
In the opposite direction we had nice views of the valley we'd just hiked through.
Once settled, we made and ate dinner while watching three adult and two young elks grazing in the field in front of us. As the sun set, the alpenglow on the peak was beautiful as were the clouds.
We went to bed at a decent time knowing we'd be getting up early and it'd be a long day summiting. We fell asleep listening to the howl of a wolf.
We were up early-ish - about 7am - the next morning to prepare to go. The weather could not have been more perfect.The first leg of the hike required a steep hike up to the saddle between Mount Daly and Capitol Peak.
This was a steep but beautiful area - wildflowers of every color were everywhere!
Upon reaching this saddle, we had about 12 or 13 snow fields to cross. To my surprise, I did not wipe out on any of them and take a ride.
Once through the snow, we climbed to the top of K2, (aka Point 13,664'). I read somewhere that K2 is a little point on a pile of talus. No joke! I got a nice photo of Dave talus-hoping to the top of K2.
From here, the view of Capitol Peak and the surrounding area was quite stunning. In addition, we could see many other lakes, and peaks in almost every direction.
We started to notice that the air was getting really foul. It seemed there must have been a fire in the area. Later, on the summit we could see this fire - what a mess it'd made of the air. We could see nothing toward the north as a result of the smoke.
All that remained was to hike the ridge, cross the knife edge and summit.
While I certainly did not walk across the top of the knife edge (that thing is thin, and the price of a trip is an 1,800 fall to the base), I did manage to stand up in a few spots. I also managed to butt-scoot in some other spots as well. All-in-all though, it was not nearly as bad as all the literature had made it out to be.
During this final section crossing the ridge, we ran into someone who'd summitted before us. He was on his way down.
Finally, the summit was ours. From here, we could clearly see the fire in the distance. While on top, we could see that the fire was squashed too. It was amazing how quickly the air cleared out.
Dave signed the summit register and we lounged around on the top for about an hour we estimate. Given the time stamp on our photos, we think it took us about 3.5 hours from camp to summit.
After a while relaxing and after having a snack we started the long journey back. After passing K2 again on the descent, we saw a party of two men about to summit K2 on their way to Capitol. We were a bit surprised at their late start. At least the weather still looked solid.
I fell and slid a good 100,000 times crossing the snow fields on the way back. In some cases, this was pretty fun and an efficient way to lose altitude. In other cases, it was just annoying!
Finally, we got back to camp. We washed up in the local creek. Made dinner, and just enjoyed the evening. Neither of us were psyched on hiking out the 6.5 miles and driving home so we opted to stay the night.
As the evening went on, we couldn't help but notice that the two men we'd passed still hadn't come down. Finally hours after I started worrying about them, one did return at about 8pm. Seems he and his buddy and become separated at the knife edge shortly after we'd seen them. He was not willing to make the moves across it, but his buddy wanted to continue. So they separated. He waited for his friend to return for hours and hours and hours.
Realizing something may be wrong and that it was getting late, he opted to descend. They had no gear with them so he had to walk the 6.5 miles back to his car. He was a bit distraught fearing his friend was injured, or worse had fallen to his death.He was heading back to the car to contact SAR to initiate a rescue.
We encouraged him to wait until morning to make the call since SAR wouldn't be able to do anything in the dark anyway. No doubt this guy spent a long, fretful night in his car.
We watched for his friend all night long and he never came down. I didn't sleep well worrying about him. Finally, at about 7am, the other guy hiked by veeeerrrrrryyyyy slowly. He clearly had spent a very unpleasant, and likely sleepless night on the peak somewhere. Arg. Not fun! Still, we were glad to see him return.
We made some breakfast, packed up and hiked the long hike out to the car. After some lunch in Glenwood Springs, we drove home. Great trip!
