Clark Peak & Daly Peak

Date: 07/17/2021
Partner: Kristi Henes, Heather Ryan (photos by all)
Distance: 6.25 miles
Elevation Gain: 3600ft
Summits: Clark Peak, Daly Peak
Difficulty: Class 3
Duration: 8 hours 40 minutes

After reading about the 'awful' talus in the Clark zone I was a little nervous. However, as it turned out the talus hopping was kinda fun. There was just a lot of it. In fact... I had a fever... and the only prescription was more talus. So we hopped our way from camp to Clark's west ridge and scrambled on solid rock taking in the stellar views of Capitol, Snowmass and everything else in this incredible place.

After climbing Clark, the talus hopping continued, and we made our way to the K2-Daly saddle and ascended Daly's class 3 south ridge. Two thirds of the ridge was fun scrambling, the last third was class 2 walk up. Looking back to Capitol from the ridge was awe inspiring. What a sexy mountain Cap is!

After spending some QT on the summit I proposed descending a loose easterly gully and traversing to some un-named lakes above our camp. It was a more direct route but there was some risk of nastiness in the gully. The girls were having none of it, so we descended back down the ridge, dropped early and talus hopped back to camp.

At camp we ate, napped and enjoyed some brook side brews before hitting the hay. A tremendous day in the books!