There's nothing nice that can be said about thirteener "V 3" near Ophir. Perhaps the nicest is that it's a pile, because that doesn't include such adjectives as heinous, awful, dangerous, etc. There's currently five other trip reports on the dot com for "V 3", all five detailing trips up the northwest ridge. Four of them were done in dry conditions. All five of them complain about the utter garbage rock, and the four done in dry conditions all make it sound like a horror show of typical high angle San Juan hardpan, dicey scrambling in the Class 3 to Class 4 range, and high consequences for mistakes. My friends Stav and Whiley also took the northwest ridge, and Stav wrote that it "had [him] shaking with fear".

Am I beating in the fact that the northwest ridge is not fun or safe? I didn't want to climb "V 3" in typical conditions because it sounds like it straight up sucks, and so I sought to climb it on snow to cover up the hardpan, and perhaps by a different route. I found just such a route that's 99% snow, with the final 1% being the 20-foot Class 2+ summit block. How's that for making the best of an otherwise miserable peak?

After much research consisting of Google Earth, high resolution satellite photos, and an alternate (dry) route from the Climbing Cooneys' climb13ers.com (used for the approach, not the summit climb), I decided to give the eastern side of "V 3" a shot. My friend Heather also wanted to come, probably because I'd ranted about how allegedly crappy "V 3" was a few too many times and she wanted me to shut the hell up about it already. With the low snowpack this year, especially in the San Juan, we had to get our climb done with a small window of viability. Heat, sun, and continued dry conditions meant we had only a handful of weekends and if we couldn't get up the peak on this route I'd been scheming then we'd have to default to the northwest ridge, which neither of us were stoked about in the least. Slope angle was questionable given it was basically sustained 30-50 degrees for 1,700 or so vertical feet, at least according to Caltopo, but the whole peak is steep, not just our route.

We figured we'd give it a shot and if it turned out to not work, well, at least we tried. We gathered our sharp, stabby thingies for hands and feet, got up at 2am, and drove from Ridgway to Ophir, where we parked on the road to Ophir Pass, which was still gated. We hiked three tenths of a mile up the road and took a right towards the parking area for Swamp Canyon (FS 360.2C). This road is also gated, and permanently, though it continues far past the gate into Swamp Canyon, stopping at the end of the canyon. It crosses Howard Fork, which has a footbridge built across it.

Once across the creek the road switchbacks a couple of times then runs in more or less a straight line to the end of the canyon. There were plenty of snowdrifts on the road, and we were surprised to find that they were frozen solid in the darkness. It was quite warm out and we were worried that we'd be postholing on the approach, the upper mountain would be a sloppy mess, or both. This bode well. Treeline came quickly in the canyon, which was full of smashed up trees and avalanche debris. We'd already gone past the turn-off for the basin serving the northwest ridge, and at the end of the low angle terrain (presumably about where the road ends, had it not been snowed over) we climbed up a steep, icy snow slope next to a waterfall. A couple hundred feet up this slope two massive, cubic blocks of rock came together and presented a single route into the middle basin. We stopped here to put on our crampons, and the low angle snow lead into a large, flat area below a number of snowy cliffs and ramps with numerous frozen waterfalls.

Each of the waterfalls was running as we twisted and turned our way up the ledges. The snow was perfect, crunchy, frozen solid, and delightful to climb on. Only on one short, narrow constriction did we have a move or two on solid ice, which we could have avoided had we not been lazy about going around it. After topping out on the ledges we were faced with a second low angle snow gully which led into the upper basin.

Timing was pretty much perfect - sunlight was just reaching the summit of "V 3" as we entered the upper basin.

We still couldn't see the upper east couloir, but the entrance ramp into it was obvious. Since our snowshoes had been dead weight all day, and wouldn't be useful in the couloir, we dug a little hole and left them behind. If the couloir I wanted to climb turned out to be a fake at the very last second, we could still go up the Cooneys' route too.

On both satellite and Google Earth it was difficult to tell what the couloir itself would be like. Steep, certainly, but how steep? How narrow? It looked like there would be at least one rock choke (the large rock about a third of the way down in the Google Earth screenshot), and given that it was east facing we couldn't be sure it wasn't at least partially melted either. The ramp was easy, and it wasn't until we were on top of the ramp and directly below the couloir that it finally revealed itself.

We'd been wondering all day if it was going to go...

We hooped and hollered at the fact that the entire couloir was full to the top. Even the choke seen during our research ended up being nothing! No difficulties on this one at all! How lucky were we that this line not only worked but was in absolutely perfect condition?

The snow in the couloir was suncupped but solid and made for perfect little steps to walk up. We didn't have to kick a single step of our own the whole way up. The couloir was the steepest part of the day, but shorter than we'd been expecting based on Google Earth - all told it was probably less than 400 feet up the couloir, mostly on Moderate Snow with a Steep Snow finish to a relatively low angle area just below the summit block. This is the final hardpan section in other reports, and once again was totally covered in snow. A single ice axe had been sufficient for the couloir.

We were ecstatic that this route had actually worked. No sketchy trash rock to climb on, just yummy snow! We still had the summit block to go but knew it was easy. A few feet left of us was a small, slabby cleft in the block that led to the summit. About 15-20 feet of Class 2+ scrambling later and "V 3" was ours!

Given that it was sweltering on the summit we didn't stay long, just long enough to take some pictures and sign the register (which was a glass jar - please stop using glass summit registers!) We quickly scrambled back down to the snow and plunge stepped the couloir.

The snow was getting a little mushy on top, but nothing concerning. Our return to the snowshoe cache was quick, and we made good progress down the snow gully to the cliffy section, across the middle basin, and down the lower snow gully and waterfall back to the lower canyon.

When we reached Swamp Canyon we packed up our crampons. It was all low angle snow or road from here on out. We were worried about the sunny part of the road being posthole hell, but the snow held up nicely - not a single posthole. Our snowshoes had been pointless to carry! We met a group of skiers at treeline who looked a bit annoyed with conditions, which to be fair would have sucked for skiing. For climbing, however, they couldn't have been any better. We made our way back down to Heather's vehicle, then to my place for a nice afternoon nap. Both of us were stoked that we'd found such a good route and good conditions up a notoriously awful peak. Like any route on "V 3" ours would undoubtedly be horrible dry, but we'll take great snow over terrible rock any day. Let's be honest, we'll take great snow over everything! Snow rules!

Statistics

Climbers: Ben Feinstein (myself), Heather R.
Trailhead: Ophir Pass Road

Total distance: 6.7 miles
Total elevation gain: 3,535 feet
Total time: 5:30:55
Peaks: One ranked thirteener

• "V 3", 13,528'

Splits: