Mountain Safety: Why Capitol Peak is the Hardest Colorado 14er

Capitol is an extremely mentally taxing mountain. You are on mentally and physically the entire time. The commitment factor on this mountain is greater than maybe any other of the 54-14ers. This mountain should be called a low fifth class mountain. It definitely requires some basic rock climbing skills and movement, some technical rope skills. Those areas of low fifth class prove to be extremely challenging for those who are not prepared. Route finding on this mountain is not putting your head down and following a trodden trail. You really have to look up and have a basic sense of mountain awareness that only comes with time and experience. When you are being chased by a thunderstorm down the knife edge on Capitol, you don't have time to, you know, pull out your printout from 14ers.com and read several paragraphs of where to go next. You have to have a sense of where you've been, where you're going, and be able to move quickly. K2 and the summit are two of the more challenging sections. Big boulders and a lot of loose rock. You have to be careful about what you step on because not everything is as solid as it is on other parts of the mountain. There are several different ways to go up and over K2 as well as the summit. Paying attention to the route finding there is the most important. If there's any threat of weather, if there's any worry about technical difficulty, you should turn around before you go up and over K2. The knife edge is actually some of the most solid rock on the mountain. How we move across the knife edge with climbs and how many recreational climbers could easily do so is tying into both sides of the rope and counterbalancing each other on either side with hands on the top of the knife edge moving yourself across and there are typically good footholds below. That way if one person were to slip the other person just sits down. People don't typically cross that very quickly and if there is a lot of folks on the mountain that can be the bottleneck especially when people are rushing down with the threat of oncoming weather. Capital should never be attempted without a helmet because that there is one route one way up and one way down. People are oftentimes climbing above each other and can knock rocks down. There is no shortcuts off this mountain. You have to go back the way you came up. The amount of time that you spend at altitude on this mountain is greater than it is on a lot of the other 14ers. That definitely increases your physical and mental fatigue. You start to you know fumble and bumble a lot more and their footing might not be as sure. When I assembled Capital for my first time was my first 14er when I was 17. I felt like a rock star going up and as soon as I got to the top I turned around I realized that I got to go all the way across what I came up get back to K2. My nerves were shot. It took a long time. My best friend and I we had a very gripping experience. We were so relieved when we got there and realized that we might have overstepped our boundary and we got lucky on that one.