On July 19th, Chris, http://www.instagram.com/alpinepeace, set out to complete the Pawnee to Little Pawnee Traverse. It was epic. I got to use my newly acquired snow climbing skills since there was still snow on the way up to Pawnee. Thanks Colorado Mountain Club! http://www.cmc.org This front range scramble was all it was cracked up to be. Plenty of class 3 and 4 sections, a butterknife edge, and route finding. It’s a rare occurrence when you see only one cairn on the route.
We opted to reverse the traverse that is described in most guide books. This was for a couple of reasons. First, we wanted to climb up the crux instead of downclimbing. Second, bushwhacking downhill seemed more pleasant than bushwhacking uphill. This did make the route finding a little more difficult but I was happy with our decision in the end.
The route on the traverse consisted of dropping down on the north side of the ridge to get over some notches and climbing on the ridge itself. The only time we went to the south was on the summit block where Chris took the dihedral and I went just south of even further south around the dihedral. Route finding is half the fun on this scramble so I don’t want to give too much beta away.
We then followed the ridge down to Long Lake where we bushwhacked our way down the south face and made our way back to the car at Brainard Lake. It took us 8.5 hours to complete 10.5 miles of pure awesomeness. We had perfect weather thus we got to take our time and play around on the traverse. Also I’m not fast. Some would even call me slow. 😝
All in all, it was a perfect Friday spent with a marvelous hiking friend. I would highly recommend this front range scramble if you haven’t checked this one off your list. Even if you have, it bears repeating.
