Citadel

Bolted after work on Friday to the Herman Gulch trailhead, not too far north of the Eisenhower tunnel.  In bed early as it was a definite alpine start on Saturday.  Did make a quick pit stop at Broken Compass on the way there though.

The objective was Snoopy's Backside couloir to get to the top of The Citadel.  There were some minor avalanche concerns, and some possible shitty weather moving in, but we ended up having a good day in the mountains.

Fairly straightforward three-ish mile hike to get to the couloir.  Here's a good shot, stolen from summitpost.org, that shows the climb.

The day ended up being eight miles and eight hours.  Lots of post holing on the way back.  Definitely a beginner climb and I had a blast.  There are quite a few climbs of this type on Pikes and I'll definitely be looking into those next year.

A few other pics from the day:

Couldn't stick around after the climb, I drove straight back to the Springs, grabbed the dog, and headed down to Canon City.  $100 and two of her friends had left Fossil Brewing on Friday night, slept on Gold Camp Road, then got up on Sat and rode up to Victor before dropping down Phantom Canyon and over to Red Canyon Park in Canon.  I met them with pizza and beer for night two.  The next day they got up and rode up Shelf Road and back to Fossil.  150 miles total on the weekend for them.