I climbed Pyramid Peak on July 24th, 1999 with my friend Mike.  We started out at the Maroon Bells trailhead, and hit the trail around 6:00am.  Although there were several cars at the trailhead, we were the first to start the route up Pyramid.   Everyone else was either overnight camping, or doing some other early morning hike.   At 6:00am, it was already fairly light out, and I left my headlamp in the car.   We quickly hiked the only easy mile of the hike past Maroon lake, over two bridges and to the large cairn that marks the left-hand turnoff where you begin the STEEP trail up to Pyramid.  We had no trouble seeing the cairn, but some other people we talked to said they missed it and wasted some time bushwhacking up the steep trail, so it's worth keeping a sharp eye out for the turnoff.

The trail headed up steep for about 1/2 mile, and then turned to a rock filled gully you must hike up.  Luckily, at this point the gully filled with snow and we were able to quickly kick-step up what would have been a more tiring rock hopping climb.  We brought ice axes with us, and I was glad, because although the snow was only 20 degrees, it slopes off sideways towards the boulders on the side of the gully, and the whole time you are walking (about 1/2 mile) it is only a 30 foot slide into the rocks.  At the top of the gully is the famous Pyramid Cirque right at the foot of the main headwall of Pyramid.  Over the course of the day we saw or heard 3 rockslides down this face, so climbing it would be a suicidal option.  At this point, believe it or not, Mike and I were still debating whether the large mountain in front of us was Pyramid.  We had brought Dawson's book with us, but the picture in the book did not look like the peak.   The peak we saw was basically a double-peaked mountain, while the picture in Dawson's book showed only one.  As it turns out, it was the right peak, but the picture in the book was taken from across the valley or from a helicopter, but definitely not from the route.  The peak never looks like the picture in the book while on the route.  Oh well.

At the cirque, there are two ways to the summit, left (easier) or right (harder).   We went the easier way, and had brought a rope and some slings to set up in case the legendary rotten rock and exposure were too scary.  The cirque is at ~12000 feet, and the first thing we had to do was cross the boulder field that formed from all the rockslides on Pyramid.  There was no trail or cairns, but the couloir you must head for to the left is obvious.  There is a fairly good trail heading up the couloir, and I put my helmet on here after a rock kicked loose by Mike missed my head by about a foot.   To his credit, he called "Rock!" and it would have nailed me if he hadn't.  This trail is steep - maybe the steepest section of the hike.  When you reach the saddle, you are at 13,000 feet, and get an incredible view of the opposite side of the pass.  I think we reached here about 8:45.

The picture to the right shows the couloir you hike up; it ends at about the left side of the picture.  The technical route heads up almost on the left skyline ridge.

This is where the technical part of the climbing begins.  This climb, I am sure, was a lot harder when there were no cairns and the loose rock had not been kicked off by many people going ahead of you.  There was still some loose rock, but the trail was fairly easy to follow if you looked for the cairns.  When we got off route or couldn't find a cairn, we just headed up the easiest way we could find and would quickly see the route again.  We never rushed and summited about 10:45.  The trail register showed the last person to summit the previous year was October 15th, at 3:40pm.   His comment was "Kind if late."  It sure was, since he only had about an hour and a half of daylight left!  The first people to summit this summer were in about mid-June.  I won't say what the first entry in the whole register was, but be sure to read it if you summit.  At 11:00 we started down.  It had been cloudy all day, and any rain or snow would definitely add greatly to the difficulty of the peak.  As it was, being dry, we never uncoiled the rope and I regretted bringing it because it was _heavy_. 

On the way down, we met several people on their way up.  At the summit, there were just three other people while we were up there.  We met 2 more at the saddle around 12:00, and told them they had about 2 hours of climbing to go.  At this point there were dark clouds all around us.  They seemed happy with their progress and said after they waited for their friends to catch up they would attempt to summit.  I don't think they could have reached the summit before 3:00, and it started raining before that.   I hope they were ok.

We reached the valley trail back to Maroon Lake at about 2:00, right as it started to rain.  Unfortunately, after having no trouble finding the route on the technical portion, we lost the tourist trail completely by following some false cairns that led nowhere.  Doh! Since we knew where we were, we followed interlinking deer trails down the valley until we finally found the main trail back to our car.  Roundtrip time - 8:30 hours.  Very cool hike, with a little of everything.