Last week, myself, Mark, and Kate went to Hallets Peak in RMNP to climb the Culp-Bossier. The "Culp," is a classic 8 pitch alpine rock climb on the steep north face of Hallets Peak. It is characterized by steep runout face climbing and difficult route finding.
We started our day with 3:30am meet time at the Colorado Mountain School office here in Estes Park. We drove to the bear lake trailhead and were out of the car hiking by nearly 4:00am. The approximate 2.5 mile approach to Hallets is short by RMNP standards as its one of the most accessible peaks in the park. We made short work of the approach thanks to the fitness of Mark and Kate, arriving at the base of our intended route by about 6:00am. Unfortunately there was already another party on the climb as well as two other folks just starting up. We made the decision to wait it out to see how well the other teams were moving before starting. After 45 minutes of waiting without much progress by the parties ahead of us, we changed plans to climb the nearby Better Than Love to Love linkup.
This route is a hybrid of the Love Route and the Better Than Love Route as it combines the best pitches of the two into one classic tour of Hallets. We started up the first "approach" pitch to the base of the classic 5.9 dihedral of Better Than Love slightly before 7:00am. We all cruised up to the belay and realized that it was much colder in the shade than in the sun. The following pitch was a classic dihedral of mostly hands with a couple of roofs and thin face climbing. This was a rope stretcher 60m pitch that was slightly wet in spots and landed us just below where Better Than Love meets the Love Route.
We then had a wandering pitch through some loose blocky terrain with some short 5.6 sections to a large ledge where the upper headwall loomed above. Another rope stretcher pitch brought us to a semi-hanging belay stance around 10am. As we all gathered at the belay happy to be in the sun, I was elated looking at the steep face above.
I set off on the continuously steep face linking together small seems and cracks while attempting to manuever around the running water from above. "This stone was perfect," I thought, as I made my way up the face smearing my feet on wet holds and pinching the damp alpine Gniess. "This was one of the better alpine pitches I had climbed," I thought to myself as I arrived at the belay after yet another full 60m pitch. When Mark and Kate arrived at the belay they undoubtedly agreed with my sentiments. Kate exclaimed that "That was the best pitch I have climbed anywhere!" I could tell by the smile on Marks face that he concurred.
Another pitch of 5.9 and a short 5.6 pitch found us at the summit at 11:20am. As I began to coil the rope I glanced above us and saw that the party that was ahead of us on the Culp-Bossier was just topping out. We had passed them in a party of 3. I was glad that we decided to climb an alternate route.
The 3 of us made our way down the scree field to the start of the rappels that began the descent. We made haste down the rappels and down the 3rd class descent gully back to the base of the peak. We returned to our packs around 1:45 and had a bite to eat and rehydrated before the hike out.
We were all psyched to have climbed such a great route and be back to the car before the afternoon thunderstorms. It was another fantastic day out in the mountains with new friends!
