'AT ITS MOST SPECTACULAR'

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Apr 4, 2008 | by DAVE PHILIPPS

He set off following the snowshoe track up through a spruce forest and out above tree line. A mile later he ran into a man shuffling slowly up a steep, snowy ridge with crampons on his feet and an ice axe in his hand.

The man introduced himself as Peter Castricone, a Denver resident who had been hiking fourteeners for years, but had not climbed snow until that day.

How did he hear about Atlantic Peak?

"I bought that book, 'Colorado Snow Climbs,'" he said.

Cooper politely introduced himself as the author and shook Castricone's hand. They walked together for a few minutes, but Cooper, with his long legs, eventually left Castricone behind.

"That's sort of the mixed bag of guidebook writing," Cooper said a few minutes later. "You sort of want to have these climbs to yourself, but also want to share them."

The ridge had narrowed to a slender catwalk with steep cascades of rock and snow dropping on both sides. One misstep could be the start of a long, rocky plunge.

"I wish he wasn't alone," he said. "That's generally not a very good idea, although he did seem to have all the proper equipment."

Concerns like that are the hardest part of writing a guidebook, he said. There are lots of 3 a.m. starts, boulders whizzing down couloirs within a few feet of your head, frostbite-inducing wind -- but what hikers will do with the book is a lasting, uncertain variable. One person's classic climb could be another's last.

"It is dangerous," said Cooper. "You hope they come prepared and have a good background."

Three hours after leaving their cars, Cooper and Craig stepped onto the broad, snow-covered top.

The big, empty sky at this altitude looked as intensely blue as lapis lazuli. White peaks beveled the horizon on all sides. The climbers could gaze over to Mount Elbert -- the tallest peak in the state -- and beyond to the distant white brows of the Maroon Bells. Pikes Peak hovered on the horizon, 70 miles to the southeast.

There was no sound. There were no other visitors, or even signs of other visitors -- just ice and rock and the sun glaring off the snow. It felt like a place very far away, even though the cars sat only about three miles distant.

"This is really stunning, isn't it?" Cooper said.

The climbers still had the trip back, along the catwalk of a ridge, and down broad snowfields where they could glissade like children at a sledding hill. But first they hunkered behind a drift, in the sun, to have lunch.

A few minutes later, Castricone straggled up and joined them, breathless, but smiling.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or dave.philipps@gazette.com SNOW- CLIMBING SPEAK

Couloir: A French word for corridor. A steep, narrow snow gully, often hemmed in by rock, that lingers on a mountain after other snow melts.

Crampons: Metal spikes that attach to boots to offer traction on steep snow and ice.

Cornice: An overhanging lip of snow formed by wind. Cornices can block couloirs or create obstacles on ridges.

Glissade: To slide down a snowfield in a sitting position, using the spike of an ice axe as a brake. In the right conditions, some mountains in Colorado offer glissades of more than 2,500 feet.