DAWSON'S GUIDE TO COLORADO'S FOURTEENERS, VOLUME 2

The Southern Peaks Guidebook

Volume 2 of Dawson's Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners covers the 25 14,000 foot peaks in southern Colorado. Ranges covered are the San Juan and Sangre De Cristo, and Pikes Peak. The volume includes 17 full-page topographic maps: the most crisp and easy-to-read of any guide yet published. Illustration also includes dozens of photographs showing the routes, with notes and route-lines. The volume is 206 pages, including a complete index, directory of phone numbers, peak lists, and other useful appendices. What's more, a comprehensive how-to introduction has numerous tips for people new to "fourteener bagging."

If you hike, ski, climb, or simply want to learn about Colorado's highest peaks, this is the only guidebook you'll ever need.

This Volume of Dawson's Guide received the 1996 Banff Book Festival Award for mountain exposition. This is a great honor for a guidebook, and a fine acknowledgment of the terrific mountaineering that Colorado has to offer.

Foreword by Michael Kennedy

Former Publisher and Editor-in-Chief — Climbing Magazine

For many of us, a particular mountain assumes a significance beyond what we've achieved on it, although it is often only in retrospect that we understand the nature of our relationship. So it has been for me with Capitol Peak*, a mountain close to home and close to heart.

My introduction to the perverse pleasures of winter climbing came in January 1974, when Lou Dawson and I made the second winter ascent of Capitol Peak's North Face, during which I bagged my first new route, first gearless bivouac, and first near-death experience when, on the descent, I slid a hundred feet on the steep snow before being stopped by a rock. Over the next four years I climbed the North Face three more times, twice in summer and once again in winter, and after each of these climbs we'd come down Capitol's Knife-edge Ridge. Although only a mildly technical scramble, it's still one of the hardest standard routes on a Colorado Fourteener. I'd always wanted to make a one-day winter-conditions ascent of the "Knife," and at the end of March 1991 decided that now was the time, even though I'd miss calendar winter by a week.

Spontaneity breeds simplicity. Skis for the approach, ice axe and crampons for the ridge, stove and food to keep the fire burning. Lightweight gear and years of experience had bred a certain efficiency and confidence. A chilly 4:30 a.m. saw me gliding along a well-frozen crust, hoarfrost sparkling in the headlamp's beam. Slow and steady, I wandered up through pine and aspen as the sky brightened from purple to pink to blue. The dense forest gradually gave way to frozen lakes, windscoured snow, and rocky ridges against an electrically clear sky.

Five thousand feet from the valley floor, I stepped out of ski bindings and donned crampons. After a delicate scramble across the blade-like section of the ridge the route is named for, I plodded deliberately up the last half-mile of funky snow to the top. I gazed out over the familiar snowy landscape, thinking of other mountains beyond the horizon. Satisfied, I headed down. Almost too soon I was back at my car, bone-tired and thirsty, but full of the simple animal pleasure of 12 hours and 28 miles alone on a peak that had meant so much to me over so many years.

Lou Dawson and I have shared many adventures since 1974, from big-wall climbing in Yosemite and Alaska to long weekends in local huts with our wives and children, but for me that first climb on Capitol remains both a gift and an inspiration for all that has followed. Despite my fascination with the remote peaks of Alaska and the Himalaya, I've always come home to the mountains of Colorado.

Lou has never really left. No one understands the Colorado Rockies better or has a more intimate feel for their secrets, the kind of hard-won knowledge only gained from three decades of backcountry travel in all seasons. Thankfully, Lou continues to explore and learn, and thus inspire climbers in their travels in our magical backyard wilderness. May he do so for another 30 years.

[Note: Capitol Peak is a Colorado fourteener located in the Elk Mountains.]