Tigger Peak and Mt. Princeton

Once again we’ve been defeated by a fourteen thousand foot mountain. I was turned back by weather some five hundred feet below the summit of Mt. Democrat and a blizzard cancelled an earlier expedition to Mt. Bierstadt, but at least on this particular adventure we were able to walk away with a small victory.

Our planned assault on Mt. Princeton, one of the twenty highest peaks in the Colorado Rockies, was to be a two-pronged affair. I had studied our planned route in advance by reading dozens of trip reports from other climbers and felt like I had a pretty good handle on things. We would make our way up the east face of the mountain to a 13,000-foot summit known as Tigger Peak, which is actually a sub-peak to nearby Mt. Princeton. From Tigger's summit we would climb west along the saddle and scale the heights of Mt. Princeton itself. Or so went the plan.

We left our hotel in Colorado Springs at 6am and made the first miles of the long trip to Buena Vista in the dark. An hour after sunup we were snaking our way along a single-lane, rock-strewn dirt road designed only for four-wheel drive vehicles (fortunately, our rental car was a RAV 4 and handled the chore fairly well). The road was so narrow that an eighteen-inch mistake would send you plummeting down a cliff with nothing but thin air to stop you for some two thousand feet. So we drove carefully. Sure enough, when we arrived at the 11,900-foot mark we found the slightest trace of a trail leading up the east face and began following it.

Within half an hour, just long enough to make sure you didn't turn back, the trail completely disappeared and we were left to fend for ourselves up a nearly vertical slope completely covered with stones and boulders. The lead climber had to be constantly aware lest he send a dangerous avalanche of rocks raining down on the second man in line. After an hour it became obvious that we were in for a much bigger job than we had anticipated. After two hours, as we approached Tigger's summit, I was secretly hoping that Stephen Dale and I would have sufficient time and energy remaining to conquer Princeton once we had achieved our first objective. It wasn't looking good.

I had noticed that Stephen Dale needed breaks more frequently than I did, which surprised me since he's a strapping 18-year-old who works out regularly. He had not trained quite as hard as I thought he could have for this mountain but then again, he was in decent physical condition and surely should have outlasted me under such conditions. And when we did take breaks, he collapsed on the nearest rock and was slow to get up again. I'm no expert on Altitude Mountain Sickness (AMS) but I've tried to do enough homework to be able to recognize it in a climbing partner or myself.

Alone, AMS is not a serious condition. It's more of a minor discomfort. However, if you exhibit signs of AMS and are too hardheaded to turn around when you should, it will get worse with altitude. If you continue to climb, AMS will turn into more serious forms of cerebral edema known as HACE or HAPE, both of which are 100% fatal if you do not descend immediately.

Stephen Dale was nowhere near either situation. He was just suffering the minor discomfort associated with mild AMS, but I still tried to keep a close eye on his condition. We made our final charge up Tigger Peak, reaching the summit around three in the afternoon. We took our summit photos with pride but by this time Stephen Dale was really pretty miserable. We continued our route west across the saddle that connects Tigger to Princeton's main summit, but he had reached the point where he wasn't having much fun and he needed a break every three to five minutes to allow his AMS symptoms to dissipate. Worse yet, he was now complaining of nausea, had lost his appetite and had eaten almost nothing since we left. He'd drunk less than two liters of water all day.

I am certain that he could have made it to the top of Mt. Princeton but by this time we were outside of my comfort zone. We stopped for about fifteen minutes and I poked a bottle of water down him along with a couple of aspirin while we reassessed our entire situation. He insisted that he could still make the summit and to be honest, I thought he could, too. But the game had changed too much for my liking. Daylight was a factor. We were alone on the mountain. He's too big for me to carry down by myself if we misjudged the situation and his AMS advanced faster than we expected. And his headache and nausea were now so bad that he wasn't having fun... and wasn't that the whole point?

So we decided on a new plan: I would make a lone dash for Princeton's summit, which was in plain site now, while he began his descent by picking up the main trail back down the east face of the mountain and the north side of Tigger Peak. It was a clear day and we would be within site of each other nearly all the time and we would maintain contact by radio. With our plan in place and backup measures agreed upon for an emergency, we went our separate ways. It didn't last long.

Every step away from Stephen Dale caused me more concern. I could see him taking frequent breaks, and our radios were not communicating quite as clearly as I'd have liked. My motivation had taken a serious hit simply because we had wanted to do this together, but now we were separated. And since no other climbers were on the mountain, a host of new and undesirable scenarios were playing through my mind. The mountain was a sea of rocks and boulders... what if I was to turn an ankle or have a problem? There was no way Stephen Dale could overcome his AMS symptoms to reach me. On the other hand, if his symptoms did not dissipate with lower altitudes, who was going to help him? It would take me an hour or more just to reach him even though we were still within site of each other and less than a mile apart.

The whole thing just didn't feel right. I knew that there was nothing seriously wrong and there was no real reason to worry - yet. But then a little voice kept saying, "Yes, but isn't that the exact reason why you should get down right now?" Why wait for a relatively minor concern to become a real mess before we react? We had already taken down a 13,000-foot peak. We had scaled a Class 3 rock face with no trail and reached Tigger's Summit. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Stephen Dale told me through our broken radio communications that his condition was not improving, although, thank goodness, it was not getting any worse. Everything had been fun until now and my gut was telling me that we should scrap Plan B and default to Plan C.

The only thing that made any sense to me was to get off the mountain and to do so immediately. Regardless of whether there was any serious problem or not, I had reached the point where my heart wasn't in it and I had lost confidence in our situation. I radioed Stephen Dale about four times before we finally established communication and mutually confirmed our plan. He would continue descending at a comfortable rate while about a mile behind him, I would turn around immediately and do my best to catch up. I probably could have made the summit with no trouble and he might have been able to force himself up as well, but this was a decision that I was comfortable with and the farther I descended, the happier I was with it.

Mt. Princeton, taken from the spot where Stephen turned around to rejoin Stephen Dale.

We reached the bottom of the trailhead, tired and a bit disappointed, only to find that our SUV was parked nearly a mile above our location. We had blazed our own trail to the top of Tigger but taken the standard route back down and the two trails did not converge. Fortunately, we found a nice couple on a four-wheel quad who offered to zip me up to the SUV, where I drove it back down to pick up Stephen Dale who sat by the roadside and waited. He was in pretty bad shape by this time. Not a dangerous condition, but a miserable one. I was happy to be down.

Our little RAV 4 whisked us back down the mountain where we crashed at a local hotel and soothed our tired muscles in a hot tub. We chased that with a pepperoni pizza and two aspirin and felt much, much better.

Once again we'd tried a fourteen thousand foot mountain and had been beaten. However, we pioneered our own route up a near vertical section of the east face and summitted Tigger Peak at 13,300 feet. The scenery was amazing, the climb was challenging, and we both made it down in one piece. We considered that a pretty suitable accomplishment.