Our climb of Quandry started off very well, as far as hikes usually go. Sometimes just finding the trailhead turns into a frustrating nightmare, but we had minimal difficulties finding this one. I guess that's not too surprising since this is a very popular 14er. From the car, we got some beta from 2 guys who were also starting out (it was about 8:00am) and headed up a switchbacking trail towards a ridge. For this part of the hike, there was no snow; I think it was about June. Halfway up to the ridge, the trails splits many ways, and there are several old roads crisscrossing your path that people choose to follow. We lost the trail several times, and just kept heading up to the ridge, which worked out fine. I don't think you can go wrong on this hike, the ridge is always visible in clear weather, and you always just hike uphill. A few hundred yards before the ridge, we reached timberline, and also started to hit patches of snow. Right before the ridge we kickstepped up a large snowfield to reach the end of the first part of the Quandry hike. One really cool thing happened here: as I was stepping up, about a hundred yards in front of my wife, all of a suddedn the ground started crawling away from me. It was two ptarmigans, mottled white and dark grey, absolutely perfectly camouflauged in the spotty snow. It really gave me a start, because they didn't even start moving until I just about stepped on them, and then they only went a few steps away. This was weird, because every other time I've seen ptarmigans, they have flown away long before I reached them. I figured that maybe they were nesting, and stepped carefully as I went by them. When my wife, Kris, got within about 50 feet, I said "You're about to see something really cool!". Unfortunately, this prompted her to start looking far ahead, trying to see over the ridge, because she assumed it was a cool view I had gotten by gaining the ridge. Because of this, she was about 1 foot from the birds when I said "Look Down!" and when she did, her scream of terror because the ground was crawling was heard two Fourteeners over. After the ridge, you simply follow it at a gentle incline for a while, and you get a good look at the popular east slopes that many people ski down, or glissade down. They are gentle, but I have read some horror stories, so be careful if you do them. More on that later. After the gentle part, about 1/4-1/2 mile from the summit, the trail gets steep, and heads right up. We were following a trail in the snow here that was well tramped, and I was regretting bringing my snowshoes, which were dead weight on my back the whole trip. The trail on the final push is steep enough that you have to kick step, but it never gets scary, just tiring. Kris decided she had seen enough of Quandry, and chose to wait for me just below the summit, near a very cool-looking couloir. I assumed that this was the famous "South Couloir" that many people glissade down. It is popular, but fairly steep, especially for beginners - about 50 degrees in the steepest part. It supposedly drops you off right at the lake at the bottom of Quandry, next to the road, for an easy hike back to the car. After I summited, I headed down to Kris, with plans to glissade down the South Couloir. Little did I know, the South Couloir actually begins directly at the summit, and we were about to head down an unnamed, equally steep one. I talked to several people at the top of the couloir, and none of them had ever done it, and none of them were interested in doing it, since it looked too dangerous to them, even though almost all of them had ice axes. Did I mention that we did not have ice axes with us? Up until now, our entire experience with ice axes, self-arrest and glissading was a four hour lesson from someone who had taken a one-day course on self arrest. Even after all these good reasons not to go, and the fact that we were going to use ski poles as ice-axes, we decided to go for it. At first, as we shot down the extremely steep couloir, we thought we might be in over our heads. To stop on the hard snow, we had to roll over and use a full self-arrest for several seconds. After we got used to that, however, it went well, and we slowly descended about 1500 feet. At this point, the couloir made a turn and went around a corner, so I decided to leave the couloir and hike down to see what happened after that. It was a good thing I checked - since we were in the WRONG couloir, this one was not a gentle gliassade down to the lake. Immediately around the corner, it turned into a 50 foot cliff! I was able to warn Kris in time, and we were forced to leave the couloir and hike painfully slowly down the 45-50 degree slope towards the road, which we could see but was still very far away. Before we reached the road, it started to snow fairly hard, and there was some definate panic on my part as to whether we would be able to get safely down. We eventually reached the road after some fourth class moves on slippery, snow covered rocks, and dropped exhausted into the car for the ride home. To summarize, Quandry is very easy, but the South Couloir is not. You should definately have ice axes and experience before attempting it. If you just want to fool around, try the east snowfield, which is much easier. Finally, if you do try the steep descent of Quandry, make sure you are in the SOUTH couloir or you could be setting yourself up for an epic adventure..