TORREYS PEAK, via KELSO RIDGE
(14,267')GRAYS PEAK
(14,270')July 11, 2008
By Tim Briese
7 1/2 miles, 3600' elevation gain, 6:20 roundtrip time
The Kelso Ridge route up Torreys Peak is a sporty alternative to the standard pedestrian trail that goes up the peak. I had heard that it is a lot of fun from friends who had done it so I had it on my climbing wish list for quite some time. When Dallas e-mailed me and suggested getting together for a climb during his annual trip to Colorado I proposed this route and he enthusiastically agreed.
I met Dallas at the Bakerville exit on I-70 and we rode together in my truck up the forest road to the Stevens Gulch Trailhead. This road was significantly rougher than the last time I had been on it and it no longer appeared to be passable without a high clearance vehicle. There were numerous vehicles at this popular trailhead but we managed to find a parking spot in the main parking area and headed up the wide and gentle Grays Peak Trail at 6:40. After two miles we left the trail at 12,300 feet and climbed north a couple of hundred yards on a much less traveled trail to the saddle between Torreys Peak and Kelso Mountain. After a short break we were on our way up the Kelso Ridge toward Torreys= summit. The time was about 8:00 a.m. We followed a trail up through scree and talus along one side of the ridge and then the other. It didn=t take long for the ridge to become steeper and rougher, and we soon encountered areas of pleasant rock scrambling. We approached some towers and Dallas led the way up a fun Class 4 gully on the south side of the ridge crest. I was quite certain there was an easier route on one side or the other but that wasn=t necessarily what we were after today. Dallas has a great knack for finding more challenging and enjoyable ways to tackle a route. After the towers the difficulty eased for a while and we followed a trail up along the north side of the crest.
A few hundred feet below the summit we engaged the crux of the route, the infamous knife ridge of Torreys Peak. There was a considerable amount of snow left on both sides of the ridge. The left side was out of the question as far as we were concerned because the snow was so steep that we would not trust our ice axes to prevent a hazardous slide down the Dead Dog Couloir. After surveying the situation a few moments we decided to climb along the top of the snow on the right side of the ridge, just a few feet below the razor-like crest. This worked out well and we were soon above the knife ridge and climbed steeply up a talus slope a hundred yards to the summit.
We arrived on top at 9:30 and took a refreshing break to revel in the exhilarating climb we had just completed. Several other climbers came up the standard route from the south and we visited briefly with some of them. After a few minutes we left and went down the comfortable trail to the Grays/Torreys saddle and on up to the summit of Grays, where we arrived at 10:30. The weather remained clear and pleasant although the visibility today was curtailed a bit by haze. We ate lunch and rested for half an hour before heading down the Grays Peak Trail. Part way down we came across a number of mountain goats a few feet off to the side of the trail. I walked over to the top of a nearby cliff and watched some goats below displaying their amazing mountaineering abilities. We headed on down the trail and hiked back to the truck, where we arrived at 1 p.m. I thought the climb up the Kelso Ridge certainly lived up to its billing as a delightfully challenging route on Torreys Peak.
