The Maroon Bells. Instantly recognizable as the most photographed mountains in the U.S., these two prominent 14’ers, just outside of the world-famous hamlet of Aspen, Colorado, are an impressive sight. Even with restricted year-round access, roughly 350,000 people visit Maroon Lake annually to take a look–and more than a few photos–for themselves.
What lurks between the two peaks and hidden from view, is one of the Colorado’s most intense, enjoyable and deadly connecting mountain ridges. Dubbed “The Deadly Bells” by the U.S. Forest Service in 1965 after eight people died climbing them in a single year, this route is considered the second most difficult 14’er ridge in Colorado. And last summer it was on top of my checklist.
Climbing each of the Bells is itself a serious endeavor. The main routes are huge, steep, and unrelenting. Route finding is terribly confusing, and the most dangerous aspect is the loosely set, fractured rock that peels off without warning. The connecting ridge is equally treacherous, coupled with the constant inescapable dizzying exposure of hundreds of feet, where falls are nothing less than fatal. The route is interspersed by mandatory stints of exposed vertical climbing on marginally solid rock. Though only a half-mile long, it takes experienced, qualified and prepared climbers roughly two hours to complete.
This was a surprise to my friends, who learned about it as we sat around our cluster of stoves, cooking freeze-dried dinners in a wooded campsite at the base of the Bells the evening before the climb. Jess had flown in from Hawaii the day before, and Sean had driven from Woodland Park. We were there to climb a 14’er, as we do each year together in memory of Jess’s brother, Colin. I’d tried to warn them ahead of time, encouraging them to look into the full scope of it before we committed. It was now becoming clear that they had not.
A doe and her fawn circled our camp’s outskirt as if listening in to my game plan: It would take 12 hours round trip to climb the peaks via the ridge, an hour to break down camp, plus one more back to Maroon Lake to catch the last shuttle.
We needed to start hiking at 3:00 a.m.
The moon lit the trail as we followed the valley floor south out of camp. We regularly wiped sweat off our faces slogging up what’s widely known as “2,800’ of suck,” referring to the vertical gain of the slope that seemed to continue endlessly above us. The lush valley was sublime and still in the first light of the day, and the summer morning chill in the air gave way to penetrating beams of light cresting the ridge behind us. At last, we summited to a glorious summer morning’s panoramic view of the Maroon Bells Wilderness.
From our perch, we got a good look at the ridge in front of us. It cut like a sharp rocky “V” between the peaks, and though we were on the taller of the two summits, the other side of the ridge held the true tests.
The hike down Maroon Peak is sloping and steep, continuously connected by carefully navigable trails and interspersed with rocky shelves that require downclimbing. The movement, while tricky, isn’t actually very hard to execute. The real trick is the exposure. It’s one thing to make moves with level grass beneath you, it’s another completely when it slopes off steeply for a thousand feet. It simply means no mistakes are allowed. The difficulty becomes mental, more than physical.
Working our way up the other side of the ridge, we faced three sections of concern, all exposed technical scrambling bits, with short segments of moderate vertical climbing. We watched the party ahead climb up the first and longest steep section. With rock-fall being our concern, we waited, then second-guessed their route choice. Deciding on the best way forward proved problematic, as there were many options, but none being obvious.
The intrinsic beauty of the Bells begins with color and form, a true kaleidoscope of Colorado beauty. Everywhere we looked was a visual cornucopia, yet we kept our focus crisp and present on our movement. We carefully touched everything with amplified and objective clarity, judging the route’s security and stability before giving it the trust of our full weight. At times it seemed we were stepping on haphazard stacks of dishes ready to topple. And though anxious to move through the route and make good time, we wanted to fully enjoy the moment and the unique position of it all. This is what mountains do to us, they inspire us to feel alive in a heightened sense.
Higher on the ridge, we found ourselves on a small sloping shelf below the route’s crux: an imposing band of airy vertical rock. Jess took the lead and climbed up into a corner, ratcheting his body up by pulling on one side with his hands, pushing against it with his feet, and leaning his spring-loaded body into the opposite side. A fall here would be disastrous, but he looked solid. Jess topped out, more than twenty feet above us, with a giant grin. As we continued moving among the different sections, we couldn’t help feeling thrilled; the climbing was euphoric.
We had to run the trail’s last mile to Maroon Lake to catch the shuttle back to our trucks. Arriving there, a tourist stopped me. “Did you just climb those mountains?” he asked.
“Sure did,” I replied.
“What was it like?” he pressed.
“Simply amazing.”
