Citadel to Pettingell Scramble

The traverse from Citadel to Pettingell is a classic front range scramble,
requiring a rappel and some fun class 3 scrambling. Full disclosure: we did not
go to the summit of Pettingell but dropped down into the valley from the saddle
between Pettingell and the Citadel, so no beta will be provided for that section
of the hike.

Thunderstorms were in the forecast for Sunday. Shelby and I were going to hike with our friendAshley, who agreed to pick us up at 3AM with no hesitation. Shelby and I bothset alarms for 2:30AM, and somehow neither of us woke up on time. I woke up at 2:51AM and tried to make sense of the alarm clock, without a clue how we both turned our alarm clocks off in our sleep. We jumped into action and headed out the front door at 3:03AM, record time. Hopefully Shelby doesn't remember this and try to make 12 minutes our standard alpine start wakeup time.

We arrived at the trailhead around 3:45AM, donned headlamps and started hiking. There is an easy trail all the way to Herman Lake, and somewhat of a trail even beyond that. We made quick time, crossed the creek and found a traversing trail heading to the saddle on the ESE ridge of the Citadel.

Shelby and I were familiar with this ridge - we have skied off of it in the winter, and climbed the west summit of the citadel once before, but didn't traverse due to weather. We ascended the ridge to the base of the scramble.

From the ridge, you can head right around the headwall and ascent a grassy gully, or left around the back and bypass the first summit. The sun had risen and the moisture from the day before was drying, so we opted to climb the grassy gully to the first summit.

The gully was not too challenging, and we soon arrived at the  East summit. Previously we rappelled off the summit, but had read that a 4th class downclimb could get you down to the saddle between the two summits of the citadel, and opted for that. We did not see any anchor materials. The downclimb went easily, and after a short climb we were on the other summit of the citadel.

We arrived at the rappel and inspected the anchors. There was one rappel ring and a couple pieces of webbing. We added some webbing and Shelby rigged the rappel. Ashley rappelled second, and Andrew last.

After the rappel, most of the difficulties of the ridge were over. We continued to the lowest point between the Citadel and Pettingell, and decided we didn't care enough about summiting Pettingell to hike back up the ridge, so we began our descent after descending through some very loose scree (and a couple breaks to empty our shoes), we arrived back at the creek, and the trail to take us back to the car.

Clouds started building on our hike out, which always feels like it takes three times as long in daylight as it does in the dark. We eventually arrived back at the car, with a round trip distance of approximately 10 miles.