Grandeur Peak loop with MattVS and Dragonvulture.
I was up at 4:00 am to meet the guys at the West ridge trailhead. It was cold and slightly breezy, but not too bad. The first half mile the wind was a bother, but after that we didn't notice it until the summit. We definitely didn't push it today. It was a very casual pace and we just chatted the whole way up. We saw a headlamp about .5 behind us and we thought it was Jun.
There were patches of snow and ice on the way up, but nothing serious and then the last 1/4 of a mile was completely snow covered. We hit the summit in 1:13 and decided to wait for Jun. I gagged down a gel and after 10+ minutes we were all getting really cold, so we decided to continue on. Matt went back down because of time commitments and DV and I descended into Church Fork. The trail was icy and it is steep here, so we had to really take care. DV fell once, but nothing serious. I tripped on a jagged stick and almost went down and it gave me a nasty scrape on the back of my leg.
It was slower than normal going down due to the conditions and then we missed the Pipeline turnoff in the dark and ended up going all the way to the Church Fork parking lot. It was only a few minute delay and we got back up on the Pipeline and picked up our pace. We ran the Pipeline to Rattlesnake Gulch and then went down to the canyon road.
On the canyon road we were running a 6:40ish pace down, but DV needed to get home, so he picked it up even more and left me in the dust. I dialed it down to a nice 7:40-8:20 pace back to the cars. I really enjoyed this climb/run even though most of it was in the dark and the cold wasn't too bad as long as we were moving. I had a great time and it was well worth missing a few hours of sleep. | 