Capitol Peak (14,130 ft) is the hardest 14er in Colorado by its normal route. Dirk Summers and I climbed its Northwest Buttress, rated 5.9 grade IV. It took a 14 hour day from camp at Capitol Lake. Whole trip took 3 days.
We drove from Aspen to the trailhead via a long, deeply-rutted dirt road, then hiked in to the basecamp at Capitol Lake. The high country in this part of Rockies was surprisingly green, with lush grass and abundant wildflowers. Compared to California where the summer is consistently dry, here summer precipitation is predictable.
The next morning before sunrise we headed out from camp to approach the Northwest Buttress. Looked like the route was composed of clean, solid rock, however, in a few hours on an overhang pitch, hundreds of pounds of broken rock suddenly fell from below the rocks my hands were holding. The rocks fell toward my lap, before gaining speed I pushed them to the side away from me. As I scrambled to find more solid hand holds, loose rock continued to fall on me, and I eventually pushed them off. Fortunately my climbing rope - which was belayed by Dirk - was not cut by any of this rock fall action, and there was nobody below me that could have had rocks raining on their heads. Woof! disaster avoided, but so so close!
Thinking back this was one of the most frightening moments of my climbing career, comparable to Half Dome, and Mount Kenya. It will remain in my memory for life.
We summitted after a few more pitches of climbing, Then it's down the 3rd class Knife Ridge route. The rock in this section was extremely broken and loose. When we got to the knife ridge section, Dirk walked across it but I needed a belay. This was the last difficulty on the route, eventually we walked back to camp. I was thoroughly exhausted.
The next day we hiked out and it was fairly uneventful.
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