The summer of 2023 seemed to be on a repeating pattern of 2 rainy days followed by 5 sunny days. So, in mid-August, following another weekend shutdown, Nate and I decided it was high time to play a bit of hookey. I booked off two days of work and we got ourselves a bivy permit for Upper Glacier Gorge. Nate and I bivied up there for two nights (Tuesday and Wednesday nights) at one of our favorite bivy locations near Frozen Lake below The Spearhead.

On Wednesday we set out to climb Flight of the Kiwi (5.10d, 6-11p) on the intimidating Northwest Face of Chief's Head, a route that had intrigued us for quite some time. But the first pitch was a bit moist and pro looked scarce, so we re-routed to a route called House of Cards (5.10, 6p) on McHenrys. But this was not our day. When we arrived at the 5.10a fingercrack on Pitch 4, we could not find good protection and with some sharp flakes below it seemed unsafe. So we escaped off left, hiked back to our bivy boulder, and spent the evening reading and enjoying warm dinner and hot chocolate.

On Thursday, feeling like someting fun, we decided to climb the North Buttress (5.7, 6p) of Pagoda Mountain, an RMNP classic moderate route which neither of us had climbed and now seemed like a great opportunity to do so. The rock was good, the position excellent, and the climbing fun and easy. It was a nice day of exercise in the mountains. (As a bit of trivia, Pagoda is the 7th highest summit in RMNP. Top 10 highest smmits in RMNP: Longs Peak: 14,259'; Mt. Meeker: 13,911'; Chiefs Head Peak: 13,579'; Hagues Peak: 13,560'; Ypsilon Mountain: 13,514'; Fairchild Mountain: 13,502'; Pagoda Mountain: 13,497'; Mummy Mountain: 13,425'; Rowe Peak: 13,184'; McHenery's Peak: 13,327'.)

The following page gives an overlay and pitch-by-pitch photos of the climb of the North Buttress (5.7, 6p) of Pagoda, and below that a photo smorgasbord from our mini work vacation hanging out in Upper Glacier Gorge. Enjoy!

If you are climbing a route that is at least four pitches, you can get a bivy permit to camp up high in the park. Upper Glacier Gorge is one of Nate and my favorite places to bivy. There are bivy sites nestled under boulders. On this trip we stayed at one of our favorite bivy locations underneath a giant boulder.

We had planned on two days of climbing. For the first day, our plan had been to climb Flight of the Kiwi (5.10d, 6-11p) on the initimidating Northwest Face of Chiefs Head. But when we arrived at the base of the route and looked up Pitch 1, we were hesitent about the apparent lack of pro for at least 30 feet combined with some wet rock. We decided to save Flight of the Kiwi for another day and do a route on McHenrys or Arrowhead instead. I had left all of my guidebook beta at the bivy, but I had the area data and photos loaded into the mountainproject app on my phone. Seeing climbers on Arrowhead, we decided to climb a route on McHenrys. House of Cards (5.10, 6p) sounded like a good one. But when we arrived at the 10a fingercrack on Pitch 4, we could not find great protection, despite the first ascentionist's claims that the pitch took good gear. There were giant flakes below the finger crack that made a fall dangerous. So we retreated, rappelling off of two nuts. We climbed a few more pitches of moderate climbing to get to the 3rd class ridge (if we had had the guidebook information we may have tried to find Dog Star (5.8, 9p) and climbed this to the top). We hiked back to our bivy, our heads hung a bit low and feeling frustrated by the events of the day. But we regrouped and enjoyed an evening in the mountains reading books and eating dinner and drinking hot chocolate. We decided to climb something fun and easy the next day (and hence enused our ascent of the North Buttress (5.7, 6p) of Pagoda).

In the summer, the elk move to the high country. I think the ones in Upper Glacier Gorge have chosen the primo location. We also had a rare sighting of a pine martin on this trip.

Some photo art.