Columbia Peak — Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2003

This one starts at Barlow Pass along the Mountain Loop Highway. At 7172', Columbia is the second highest of the Monte Cristo peaks, second only to Kyes. A couple buddies and I hopped on our bikes about 0730, rode past the gate at the start of the dirt road, then biked the 4 miles into the old town site of Monte Cristo arriving around 0800. The ride in is fairly straight forward and flat with the occasional uphill section. We made our way through ""town"" and found the trail up to Poodle Dog Pass on the far side. By 0815 we had our bikes stashed and were on our way up the new trail. It's an easy 2-mile (or so) walk up to the pass at roughly 4300'. About half way up, we crossed a creek and topped off our water supply which ended up being necessary as this was the last water of the day. Once at Poodle Dog Pass, we took the trail (unmaintained) over to Twin Lakes. This is mostly a long traverse along the SW facing hillside as the trail makes its way to the pass above the larger of the Twin Lakes. Instead of ascending to this pass, we left the trail about 150' below it which dropped us into a large talus basin to the north of Columbia's long SW ridge. We cut through the basin then ascended a bit to get us on the top of the ridge. Sure enough there's an obvious climbers trail along the ridge. We stayed on the trail along the ridge crest then followed it up a broad, heather gully to about 5900'. Here there were some bivy sites, but no water this late in the season. From here, the ridge opens up with great views to the south and up to Columbia which still looks like a difficult climb, even this close. Eventually, the trail fades at a large black buttress and the route becomes less obvious. We went to the left of the buttress and came to our first snow slope. Not a single pair a crampons among the three of us and the snow was really more like ice this time of year. Luckily, we only needed to ascend about 30' of moderately steep snow and chopping steps worked out just fine. Once off the snow, we went up a short class 3 step, then angled off to the right up and around the buttress. We followed cairns up to the second step which is a little more interesting than the first. The easiest route we found was a 6' step that required a couple 5.0 moves to get up and over. Once up, it's easy class 2 all the way to the summit block (cairns mark the route). We walked around the north side of the summit and ended up ascending the last few feet from the east via some fun class 3 rock - now 1215. Views from the top were impressive to say the least and we enjoyed the t-shirt weather for an hour before descending. Our route off the mountain was the same as our ascent route and by the time we got back to that creek near Monte Cristo we were all dying for some water. The ride back to the cars went fast and we almost felt sorry for all the folks having to walk that 4 miles of bland road back to the highway. Fun trip in a great area.