If you are interested in some peak bagging, climb Lizard Head Peak near Durango. Might be tough on the youngster but it is a non-technical and very scenic mountain.
RS
Ripsnort:
You have your facts all wrong. There's nothing "nontechnical" about Lizard Head Peak. It's rated 5.8 and a very dangerous climb because the rock is unstable. One could easily get killed on that peak. It is the throat of an extinct volcanoe and very picturesque. If one were to climb all the mountains in Colorado by their easiest route, Lizard Head is the most difficult. BTW it's not near Durango. It's just south of Telluride.
Here's an article that I wrote which was published in the
Trail & Timberline magazine of the Colorado Mountain Club.
KC
ELECTRIC LIZARD
Slowly the tent walls turn from dull beige to pale gold. This is the light of twilight not sunrise as we are in the shadow of the monolith camped in the grass at the bottom of the Lizard Head. Someone is moving in one of the other sleeping bags and I can hear the clink of a climbing rack being stuffed into a day pack outside. I crawl out to a pale blue sky with a few thin high clouds. This is how the day began. Veiling in peace what was to come. Dan (delete), Mike (delete) and I scrambled up the scree slope to the southwest corner of the tower.
It's rotten alright, enough to make us very careful. We can see the route, which Harvey Carter had climbed in the fifties, with several runners forming a rappel anchor at the top, just to the left of the corner. We moved about 100 feet to the east (right) where we found the route, which Albert Ellingwood and Barton Hoag had climbed sixty-eight years ago. It's amazing to think that they climbed that wearing only hob nailed boots. It looked technically more difficult but less rotten.
I lead the first pitch, 80', 5.6 and rotten. It was not the little debris, which worried me but the backpack sized rocks which moved when I put a load on them that really increased the anxiety level. This pitch ends at a belay ledge large enough for two people where I pounded in a knife blade. I belayed up Mike who lead the next pitch. This pitch could be climbed as part of the first pitch but the sharp turns increase the rope drag too much to make the crux move. The second pitch goes to the left on an obtuse dihedral, then up through an off sized crack to a traversing ledge about six inches wide. It is solid and has two hard 5.8 moves to get from the dihedral into the crack. There is a ringed pin and a lost arrow at the crux. From there the ledge goes about twenty feet left to a belay ledge with several slings and pins for an anchor. I belayed Dan to the first ledge and then Mike belayed both of us up to the next ledge, one at a time. From there we scrambled up about 160' of loose scree to the bottom of the last pitch.
There were now more clouds and we could see rain about ten miles to the south, but it looked like we had enough time to make the top before it got much worse. It was about 10:00 A.M. Dan lead the last pitch which has an awkward move (5.7) to get started onto a ramp which slopes up and to the right. At the top of this ramp there is another ramp which goes up and to the left to the last belay point where there is again several slings and pins for an anchor. The last belay point is about twenty feet from the top and when I got there I thought I heard an odd buzzing but it was only momentary so I ignored it.
The top, which is about twenty feet above the last belay point, is large enough to hold only one person at a time and because of the rotten character and steep sides of the ridge, climbers are belayed to the top from the last belay point. Since I was already on belay, I continued on the way to the top. About half way there things really started humming. The rocks were buzzing with static electricity. Just then I saw a bolt of lightning strike El Diente, four miles away. Zap! Ouch! Zap! Zap! Ouch! Ouch! Sparks were arching from the grommets of my helmet to my hair. I descended a little below the ridge and removed my helmet and rack, which was full of little sparks when it moved. I asked Mike to get the camera ready. I was going to make a dash for the summit and stand there while he took a picture of the conquering hero. Some hero. I made my dash through the buzzing rocks as my beard began to puff up. I touched the top with my hand and retreated with undignified haste.
When I got back to Dan and Mike the whole top was buzzing and my hair was standing straight out. We knew that we had to get out of there quickly and at the same time not make a deadly mistake on the rappel. One at a time we readied our gear for the rappel and descended the upper wall, all the time expecting Thor's power to strike the top. It was sprinkling as we scrambled down to the rappel anchor at the top of Harvey Carter's route. One by one we slid down the rope past two wrought iron pins, to the top of the scree cone. It was 12:30. The sky was full of dark clouds and thunder when, to add the crowning insult, like so many others before us, we couldn't pull down the ropes. We flipped to see who had to go back up to straighten out the ropes and Mike lost. We made two prussicks and up he went, with rocks raining in his wake. When he got back, for just a second, we were sure that we still couldn't get the ropes loose. But they began to move, with all of our weight on them, and down they came.
We hadn't conquered the Lizard Head, but for just a second, one of us had touched the top of the most difficult peak to climb, in Colorado.
