Glacier Gorge Climbing

Glacier Gorge is a six-mile-long gorge the starts near Bear Lake and heads down to the back side of Long's Peak. It's surrounded by some of the most spectacular scenery, cleanest rock and the longest ice routes in the park. Glacier Gorge hosts a bevy of top-notch, serious, ice climbs. The routes are strewn across the northeast facing slopes of Thatchtop, the North side of Arrowhead and in the cirque surrounding Black Lake. The area is scenic and fairly remote although you are likely to run into another party on the popular routes on weekends. All of these routes should be viewed as mountaineering routes involving technical pure water ice pitches combined with long, approaches and technical descents including steep snow, loose rock, and high altitude. Protection can be scarce and/or difficult to find, and changing conditions can make a moderate full-day climb into a strenuous, post-holing, struggle. With the abbreviated winter daylight hours, be sure to start this route early, bring a headlamp and be prepared to use it. The approaches to these climbs take 2-3 hrs under good conditions and considerably longer in deep snow etc. I have made the approach from the parking lot to the base of All Mixed Up in less than 1 hour; and I have had it take 2 hours just to get the few hundred yards from Mill's Lake to the base of the route! The Black Lake cirque is a far enough trudge that most consider this a winter camping type destination.