A first descent on Capitol Peak; Hinchliffe and co. just snagged a big one in the Elks

Ski mountaineering history continues to be made this spring, deep in the mountains of Colorado. On June 4, Colter Hinchliffe, Jordan White and Riley Soderquist completed a first descent on the north face of 14,131-foot Capitol Peak in Colorado’s Elk Mountains. The ascent required a 12 a.m. start time, a steep bootpack through punchy snow, smooth navigation over a knife-edge ridge and a final technical climb to the summit. The descent needed three separate rappels, utilizing rotten rock as anchor points and a “fall, you die” mentality. To put it bluntly, in addition to the climbing skills, skiing aptitude, awareness and teamwork, this objective required quite a bit of testicular fortitude for completion.

“You look over the side [of the ridge] and you’re like, ‘What did we do? We bit off so much here, how’re we going to get down?'” describes Hinchliffe.

The trek began a few days prior to June 4 with a reconnaissance flight around Capitol. The crew observed a route through the peak’s steepest, thinnest section that they believed they could ski. From there, following a softball game during the evening—they couldn’t disappoint the fans—the three left from the Capitol Lake Trailhead. They traveled light, stashing skis, boots and climbing gear three miles up trail the night before. Traveling by the light of the moon, they arrived at Capitol Lake around 3:30 a.m.

A short boot pack deposited them on the saddle separating Mount Daly and Capitol. From there they skinned up the basin to K2—the beginning of the technical ridge climbing to the summit of Capitol.

“As soon as we arrived at K2, the moon went down and the sun came up at the exact same time,” describes Hinchliffe. “It was a beautiful moment.”

A short while later, the three were atop Capitol Peak and contemplating their next move. After peering at their proposed route, Hinchliffe was less-than-optimistic about it. “I was like, ‘we’re not doing this, I’m not doing this. It does not look good,” he explains. “It just looked like a very, very sketchy traverse in.”

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They gazed over the west face at another line, but found untrustworthy anchors and a fairly tame ski descent. They came back to the north face. “We found a big rock to rappel in off of, and kind of just took it from there,” details Hinchliffe.

Instead of snaking their way through the exposed, peppered summit, the group rappelled into the line. “We landed on a 55 degree slope with six inches of snow and just rock underneath,” Hinchliffe explains. Hinchliffe then got off rappel, and carried a combined 400 hundred feet of rope across the traverse to the next climbing anchor. “It was pretty nerve racking, that was definitely the scariest part.”

Once back on snow after the next rappel, the slope eased and the three enjoyed solid turns all the way to the final rappel, over an approximately 400-foot cliff. If getting through this final threshold wasn’t tough enough, Hinchliffe suffered a bit of equipment failure.

“I pulled my first ski off to rappel and stuffed it in my bag. Then, when I pulled my second one off, I fumbled it and it fell the rest of the way down the face, over the 400 foot cliff,” he explains. “I was rappelling through this crazy chasm with snow and ice pouring down the whole time, it was pretty exciting in there.”

Hinchliffe found the ski—a little worse for wear, but still functional—once he reached the snow below. Because of that miscue, and an ode to a previous first descent by White and Hinchliffe on Capitol called “The Plank”, the line was dubbed “Peg Leg.”

While Hinchliffe and White have previous experience tackling big objectives like Capitol together, Soderquist was making a go at his first one of this stature.

“This was the first technical ski mountaineering that I think he had ever gotten into,” explains Hinchliffe. “His eyes were wide the whole time but he kept up and he helped us out so much. But this was definitely a bigger surprise for him than it was for us.”

With such a daunting peak already bagged, Hinchliffe plans to lay low for awhile. He’ll still be getting after that spring corn, however. “There will be more adventure skiing, but I don’t think I’m going to get into anything super gnarly again this season. That was enough for one year.”

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