Intro
On this August weekend, Nate and I headed to Glacier Gorge, one of our favorite locations in Rocky Mountain National Park. I secured a bivy permit for Upper Glacier Gorge (need to be climbing a route that is at least four pitches to qualify for a bivy permit) for two nights. We hiked in on Friday after work and established camp at a bivy boulder above Frozen Lake. The weather forecast looked like we would have good morning windows and possible rain in the mid-afternoon through evening (NOAA: 60% at noon; meteoblue: 10% at noon and 40% at 3pm; personally, I find that meteoblue usually has the more accurate forecast and that I would never climb anything if I went by NOAA). We planned to get in two days of climbing.
For Saturday, we had decided that Arrowhead was a good objective. We were unsure of how long the weather window would last, and we wanted to do a sunny, moderate route to warm up for something longer the following day. At this point, Nate and I had climbed most of the routes on the south face of Arrowhead. They had all been worthy adventures. We had not yet climbed Shoshone, a 4-pitch 10a route which climbs the left of the two flake/dihedral/corner systems between Artemis and Airhead. All pitches are 9/9+/10-, so the route is farily sustained at the grade. As usual, despite the sunny high-quality alpine granite of Arrowhead, we had the entire wall to ourselves. We deemed it another worthy route on Arrowhead, especially if you are looking for something a bit shorter.
On Sunday, the weather looked pretty questionable in the morning. We hung around our bivy debating a bit. We hiked over the the base of Arrowhead, with plans to climb Medusa (5.11a, 6p) (one of the few other routes we had not yet climbed on the south face). But as we were flaking the rope out, low clouds were beginning to waft around the summit and the surrounding peaks, and the air had a distinct humid nature to it. I was game to climb and just bring a rain jacket, but Nate was a bit more hesitent (granted, I probably would have been hesitent too if I were the one always tasked with leading the harder or more runnout pitches). So we hiked out, mutually disappointed (especially when it never did actually rain—yet again I go with meteoblue), but enjoying each other's company, the interesting Washington-like clouds, and pretty flowers.
We also enjoyed a couple of evenings hanging out in this spectacular area. All in all, a great weekend in the mountains with a fun rock climb.
The following page gives an overlay and pitch-by-pitch photos of Shoshone, and below that a photo smorgasbord from our weekend hanging out in Upper Glacier Gorge. Enjoy!
