July 7, 2002

Matt and I arrived in Colorado on Sunday, July 6th, rented a car and headed out towards Steven's Gulch. We spent a couple of days camping at Steven's last year, though we never had the opportunity to climb either Gray's or Torrey's. We thought we would change that this year. We arrived at the trailhead around 3:00 in the afternoon, set up out tent, then took a hike up the Steven's Gulch to scout out our route for the next day. We only went as far as the point where the old jeep trails breaks off from the hiking trail up Gray's. This point gave us an excellent view of our route up Lost Rat couloir the next day. From what we could see, there was plenty of snow in Lost Rat, and Dead Dog couloir, our objective on Torrey's for the next day, was snow filled from the scree slope all the way to the top! We should be golden. Since there was some thunderheads building up, we decided to head back to camp and try to stay dry. That evening we passed the time sorting gear and getting ready for an early start the next day. We chatted briefly with a couple of fellows who were heading up to camp at the base of Kelso's ridge and climb the ridge in the morning.

We headed out about 5:00 the next morning and hiked up the trail to a spectacular dawn. On the way up, we watched a herd of mule deer cross the trail in front of us and head up the slope towards Kelso ridge. I took a couple of pictures, but a 28mm lens is far from the best for wildlife (that dot is really a deer!!!). We got to the spot where the jeep trail breaks off, which is easy to identify because it is about 100 yards north of a hiker's trail sign We crossed a few snow slopes as we approached the bottom of Lost Rat and found the snow to be perfect styrofoam for climbing. The hike up to the beginning of the route was a lot of fun on a perfect summer morning. As the slope steepened, we stopped to stow treking poles in favor of an axe, then started on up. The climb was straight forward and as we climbed we came to a spot where we had to decide which way to proceed. I believe the normal route on Lost Rat goes left and continues up to the ridge between Gray's and Edward's. I chose the right hand variation because this couloir was considerably narrower and looked a lot more interesting than the alternative. As we climbed up, the snow necked down to about 5 feet wide between steep rock walls. Up to the right was a prominent rock outcropping that Roach refers to as "the rascal" in his guidebook. At the route's narrowest point, I broke through a snow bridge and slid back down the slope but fortunately, Matt was right behind me and buried his axe below my feet which arrested my slide hardly before it had begun. This wigged me out a little bit so I ended up moving left onto the smooth rock face rather than try to get across the snow bridge again. Moving cautiously, I managed to get above the problem spot without further complications. Matt moved right up through where I slid without any problemss or concerns what-so-ever. Oh well... We continued on up the couloir until the snow petered out where we removed our crampons, stowed our axes and scrambled up the scree to the hikers' trail.

Once on the trail we still had a fair piece to travel to reach the top. I can't say that I enjoyed this part of the climb at all, it was more of a slog than anything. We persevered though and eventually made it to the summit. There was only one other person on top at the time we arrived, but a conga line was coming up the trail behind us. It was a little chilly in the wind at the top, but we hung around a while and enjoyed the views, though neither of us are any good at naming the surrounding peaks. We spent some time eyeing Torrey's and the probable routes up the east face. Quite a cornice was hanging over the connecting ridge south of the summit, which eliminated one route we had been considering. The gentleman at the top of Gray's pointed out Holy Cross for us, which was obvious when you saw it. We had plans to get there later during our trip.

We started back down after about 30 minutes and had a nice walk down the northeast ridge, passing innumerable hikers on their way up. When we got back to the top of Lost Rat, I spent some time looking down at it and peering up at the rascal sitting above the couloir. It was kind of cool seeing our tracks coming up through the snow! We continued on down the hikers' trail and I found the constant pounding of my toes against the front of my boots painful and this would turn out to be quite problematic as the trip wore on. On the way down we took our time enjoying the views and the wildflowers growing along the trail.