Colorado Backcountry: E. Rollins Pass - Skyscraper Glacier - 07.22.06

Submitted by jp on Mon, 07/24/2006 - 14:22

E. Rollins Pass to Skyscraper Glacier - 07.22.06

Skyscraper Photo Set @ Flickr

Andy, Dave and I met up in Boulder early on Saturday with a general plan to head toward Rollins Pass and hit any lines we could find. We made our way up the 4x4 road past Yankee Doodle lake to the dead end near Needle Eye tunnel. We didn't see any worth while lines on the east side of the pass so we decide to bushwhack over the top toward King Lake, Skyscraper and the parking lot on the Winter Park side.

Once at the top of the ridge we are happy to find a few different options:

King Lake:

Skyscraper Glacier:

We decided to drop into the drainage next to King Lake and hike over to Skyscraper Glacier from there and start the climb up. We had a few nice warm up turns on a small patch near King Lake:


Andy on the warm up patch:



JP:



After a few quick turns we started the slog over to the base of Skyscraper Glacier:

Dave starts the climb:

Andy and Dave coming up:

We reached the top of the climb and Andy's dog bonked. He had to perform a high altitude emergency rescue:

We geared up for the descent, JP drops first:



Andy:

Dave:

Our lines on Skyscraper:

We stopped on the hike out to take a few pictures of our line, snow coverage and the old trestle bridges:

All in all is was a beautiful day with good friends, Scout and Ellie (the dogs) made the trip even more entertaining and it was nice to get out with them! We probably logged around 6-7 miles total on the day.