A hiker died June 27 after a rockfall on Little Bear Peak's West Ridge Indirect route, the line climbers take specifically to avoid the mountain's infamous Hourglass. Here's why neither path off this Sangre de Cristo fourteener is the safe one, and what that means before you go.
Little Bear Peak already has a reputation before you ever leave the trailhead. At 14,041 feet in the Sangre de Cristo range, it's considered one of Colorado's most dangerous fourteeners, and on June 27, that reputation caught up with another climber. A large chunk of rock broke loose from the crux of the West Ridge Indirect approach, and the resulting fall left a hiker with critical, ultimately fatal injuries, according to Alamosa Volunteer Search and Rescue (AVSAR).
What happened
AVSAR was called out to the West Ridge Indirect approach after a climber fell "a great distance" when a large piece of rock dislodged from the route's crux, the group wrote in a Facebook post detailing the mission. The hiker was left in critical condition with severe injuries.
The team requested aerial support immediately: a hoist-capable UH-60 Black Hawk from the Colorado Army National Guard, DFPC Cañon Helitack, and REACH71 out of Alamosa. Sustained winds estimated at 60 mph, combined with high heat at the incident command post, made flying in the terrain especially difficult.
Two AVSAR technicians were inserted by Cañon Helitack at 12,100 feet in Tobin Basin and began climbing toward the hiker and his party, while a separate AVSAR 4x4 team drove up the rugged Lake Como Road with additional rescuers. The Black Hawk arrived on scene around 2 p.m. and hoisted in two more technicians, who packaged the hiker into a stable flight bag. By about 2:10 p.m., the hoist was complete and the hiker was flown to AVSAR's helipad on Lake Como Road, where a REACH71 flight nurse and flight medic began intensive life-saving efforts. Those efforts were unsuccessful.
The AVSAR technicians who had been inserted in Tobin Basin then guided the rest of the climbing party back down to Lake Como, where three AVSAR 4x4 vehicles carried them to the incident command post. All teams were out of the field by about 6 p.m. AVSAR credited the Alamosa County Sheriff's Office, REACH Air Medical Services, the Colorado National Guard, DFPC Cañon Helitack, and the Colorado Search and Rescue Association for the response (AVSAR; Colorado Sun; Denver Gazette).
The hiker's name and age have not been publicly released.
This isn't the first high-angle rescue AVSAR has run off this mountain. In 2023, the group flew a climber out from the Little Bear-Blanca traverse after a 40-foot fall, using the same Lake Como Road helipad this mission relied on.
Why climbers take this route at all
If you've read anything about Little Bear Peak, you've probably heard of the Hourglass, the standard route's notorious gully, where loose, rotten rock has claimed multiple lives over the years. Just last July, a climber was struck by a boulder described as "microwave sized" in the Hourglass, fell around 30 feet, and was found unresponsive; he wasn't wearing a helmet.
The West Ridge Indirect exists as a workaround. It lets climbers bypass the Hourglass's rockfall entirely, and it's grown more popular for exactly that reason. But per 14ers.com's route description, cited by the Denver Gazette, it "trades the extreme rockfall danger of the Hourglass route for brief, but extreme exposure on the ridge." The crux, around 13,640 feet, requires only a move or two of class 4 climbing, but with a serious fall on both sides.
In other words: pick your hazard. That's not a knock on anyone's route choice. It's just the mountain.
Free: Complete Colorado 14ers Planner
Every peak. Every trailhead. Every detail: in one spreadsheet.
- All 58 peaks ranked beginner to expert
- Safety notes and seasonal windows for each
- Route difficulty, mileage, and prep tips
There's no easy way up Little Bear
Here's the part worth sitting with: there is no beginner-friendly way to this summit. Every legal route to the top of Little Bear Peak is rated class 4 or harder. As our own route guide to Little Bear Peak lays out, the only class 2 and 3 terrain on the mountain sits on closed private property in the Blanca Basin area, off limits to climbers, which leaves the exposed, loose routes above as the only way up.
That means choosing the West Ridge Indirect over the Hourglass isn't choosing a safer mountain. It's choosing which specific danger you're prepared to manage: falling rock, or falling yourself. Both demand the same baseline of experience, conditioning, and judgment, and neither forgives a bad day.
How to manage a risk you can't avoid
If Little Bear is on your list, plan around the specific hazard of whichever route you pick, not a vague sense that one route is "safer."
- Wear a helmet, every time, on every route. It wouldn't have changed the outcome here, but it's the one piece of gear built for the Hourglass's specific danger, and it's skipped far too often.
- Start early. Loose rock gets more unstable as the day warms, and afternoon storms build fast at 14,000 feet.
- Keep real spacing between climbers in gullies and exposed sections. Never sit or climb directly below another party.
- Study the crux of your specific route before you're standing on it. The Hourglass and the West Ridge Indirect are not interchangeable, and each has its own exact failure point.
- Check the wind forecast, not just the weather forecast. The 60 mph gusts here didn't just make the climb harder, they grounded the aircraft this rescue depended on.
- Have an honest turnaround plan, and use it. Conditions that are survivable at 9 a.m. can be lethal by 1 p.m.
Little Bear doesn't get easier just because you found a way around its most famous danger. Climb it with that in mind, and give yourself every reasonable edge you can.
Photos courtesy of Alamosa Volunteer Search and Rescue. Reporting from The Colorado Sun and the Denver Gazette / Out There Colorado, based on AVSAR's own incident report. For current conditions before attempting Little Bear Peak, check 14ers.com route reports and the Alamosa County Sheriff's Office.
RECENT MOUNTAIN NEWS
