In 2017 my partner and I finished a progression course for mountaineering we had been working our way through since 2016. At the end of the curriculum you organize and participate in what they call a grad climb to put those newly learned skills to practice in real life scenarios.

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Our group chose Mount Bancroft as our objective, a 13er in Colorado with an iconic rappel down a notch that you then climb out of onto an exposed ridge scramble to the summit. This peak is infamous for its unpredictable weather patterns (I’ve been turned around twice now!) and we didn’t have a lot of optimism with the forecast that weekend.

Nevertheless we all planned to meet at the trailhead, some driving in the morning and some car camping the night before. We started the trek in the early morning hours and were rewarded with the most amazing sunrise, but unfortunately we did not beat the incoming thunderstorms.

We spent some time practicing anchor setup above the notch and opted to not commit as we would have no bailouts from the incoming storm. After a quick romp we were back at the cars at the upper trailhead.

Still a great morning out with some wonderful humans and we’ll be back again!