Matt and I took a trip to Summit County to climb Father Dyer Peak. The trailhead is 2.4 miles up Spruce Creek Road. Spruce Creek Road is 4.2 miles south of Breckenridge, Colorado. My camera batteries crapped out, so these photos were taken with my old cell phone.
The hike follows the Wheeler trail for about a half mile until you hit the Crystal Lakes 4WD Trail. Hike this road until you get to the cabin and lake. The scramble is now just in front of you.
This east ridge offers easy and fun scrambling all the way up. Matt took some of the more challenging climbs to the right of the ridge. This made me a bit nervous, but he had a great time. Check him out in this photo.
After eating lunch on top, we decided to descend to the left bowl rather than continue on to Crystal Peak (13,852 ft). We had much fun glissading down the snowfields in this valley! As we traversed back to the trail we decided to climb a coulior back to the ridge. This couloir had some nasty rotten rock that made for interesting scrambling.As we returned to Crystal Lake, I found an arrow head. Quite unusual to see one above treeline. That native american must have been hunting mountain goats.
Just as we returned to the truck, the downpour started. There were quite a few people still going up the trail as we descended. I chuckled to myself thinking of them out there soaked in the rain.
The scramble is well worth the trip, but just a warning: the traffic is horrendous getting through Breckenridge and back to I-70. It took us over an hour to get back to the highway. Then of course I-70 is always busy on the weekends. Might be better to take 285 back to Denver.
