Mt. Alice is among the highest and most striking peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park, towering above the beautiful and remote Wild Basin. A number of routes have been completed on the steep east face. It would be a more popular summit if it weren't a 9 mile hike in from the Wild Basin trailhead. But the remoteness and location are part of the appeal as well.
The weekend weather looked splitter. So Alice was a great choice for crowd avoidance. Plus, the east face of Mt. Alice would add to the list of the park's biggest walls that Nate and I had climbed that summer, including The Diamond, Spearhead, Chiefs Head, Arrowhead, Petit Grepon, Cathedral Wall.
The initial plan was to climb two routes: the Central Ramp (5.8, 6p) the first day and the Central Pillar (5.11, 6p) the next. But we finished the Central Ramp so quickly (less than 2 hours on the route, and back at camp by 1pm) that we decided to just hike out, make a good meal for dinner, and climb
Hallett the following day (to add to the list of walls we had climbed in a single summer).
The Central Ramp — the most popular technical route up the steep east face of Mt. Alice — ascends the steep ramp along the left edge of the main east face. The climbing is adventurous and sustained in the 5.7-5.8 range and requires a little bit of everything—stemming, laybacking, hand cracks, chimneys. The route is broken down into six pitches in the guidebook, but Nate and I climbed it in three pitches with some simulclimbing. For the most part we followed our noses, but we generally followed the route as per the guidebook description with a few variations here and there. Because we simulclimbed and added our own variations to the route, it is difficult to distinguish the pitches in my photos exactly, but our three simulclimbed pitches were roughly Pitches 1-3, Pitches 4-5, and Pitch 6.
The following page gives a trip report for the climb. Enjoy!