Drive Snowmass Creek Road ~1.7 miles until the road ends in a “T”. Turn right again, this time onto Capitol Creek Road, and follow the road for an additional ~7.4 miles to the trailhead. From the turn at the “T”, the pavement ends after 5 miles, and the good dirt road gets steep and bumpy in the last mile or so. To get all the way to the trailhead, a 4x4 or raised vehicle is recommended. There’s plenty of parking for a few dozen vehicles up there.

The second trail is the Capitol Ditch trail, which departs from the west side of the trailhead parking lot. There is a map board and register at this trail. The Capitol Ditch trail contours the valley to the west and eventually merges with the Capitol Creek trail about 3 miles in. This well-defined trail adds about a half-mile to the trek to Capitol Lake, but does not involve a great deal of altitude gain or loss.

Depending on your route, it’s 6~6.5 miles to Capitol Lake, which is the preferred camping area for overnighters. There are a number of established campsites. Right before the lake itself, there is 3-way trail junction. Straight leads to the lake, right leads to a number of the campsites, and left will take you up to Daly Pass. The trail to Daly Pass gets progressively steeper as you reach the top. Once atop Daly pass, the trail turns right and eventually leads to the base of the sub-peak called K2. There are a couple of choices from here. You can continue high, just below the ridge, but it’s more of a Class 3 scramble. The easier option is to drop lower into the basin and ascend gradually towards K2. Depending on the time of year, this could be a mellow snow-climb, a boulder-hop, or a combination of the two.

At the base of K2, the trail skirts around to the climbers’ left, and the exposure begins. Follow the trail with some occasional Class 3 moves to K2 and try not to be intimidated by looming mass of Capitol! Descend K2 to the north. The steep climbers trail will angle towards the ridgeline and you’ll be on or near the ridge with variations to the climbers’ left. After a few hundred yards of scrambling, the Knife-Edge will be before you. Cross in whatever way you’re comfortable…tightrope-walking, butt-scooting, or traversing just below, using the edge itself for a handhold. After the Knife, continue high on the ridgeline, again with variations to the left and right. When the ridge steepens, traverse to the left and into the east face of Capitol. The trail generally stays high and moves through various Class 3 and 4 pitches as you traverse and ascend to the summit. The trail eventually mellows and the last 100 yards or so are a stroll.

The first thing that you have to do is contrary to every peak-baggers instincts: descend.   The trail starts off dropping 400 feet down to Capitol Creek!  After a couple stream crossings (plenty of logs available for that), the trail just meanders south up the valley towards Capitol Lake.   If you're doing this as a 1-day trip, I'd highly advise a pre-dawn start in order to summit and get back into the trees before afternoon storms build up.  Being is that this is a 17 mile round-trip, not a lot of folks opt for a 1-day trip.   If you want to do it as a multi-day trip, there's plenty of good camping at Capitol Lake, which is 6.5 miles from the trailhead.  Nice thing about hiking it during the day is the incredible scenery, and the ever-present face of Capitol Peak, staring you down throughout the entire approach to the lake!

Of course, at 3:30am, there wasn't much to look at other than the couple square feet in front of us, illuminated by headlamps.  Due to an "iffy" forecast, we set a quick pace, intending to be up and down as quickly as possible.   The first 6.5 miles to Capitol Lake breezed by in just under 3 hours!   It was just barely the predawn twilight when we reached Capitol Lake.  Since we hadn't been beyond this point in the past, we opted to take a 20-minute breather at the lake until there was enough light to see the surrounding terrain a little better.   As the day gradually broke the massive north face of Capitol loomed on the other side of the lake....2000+ feet of rock!

Finally, there was enough light to see by without the headlamps, and we quickly located the next section of trail.   From just below Capitol Lake, the summit trail takes a left turn and does a steep climb of Daly Pass, the low point between Capitol Peak and Daly Peak.  After the mellow grade we'd been on all morning, this was a bit of a shock to the legs and lungs!  In a half-mile, you'll gain over 1000 feet on the steep, switchbacking trail.

 From the top of the pass, take a couple minutes to admire the scenery on both sides!   To this point, Capitol Peak has been in sight the whole day, but now disappears behinds the ridgeline.  The trail takes off south (to your right) into the neighboring basin, and crosses a number of gullys.  One fairly significant gully can either be traversed across via a series of minor Class 3 moves, or downclimbed or re-ascended on very loose scree.  Presently, the hike turns into a boulder-scramble.   There's not much of a trail here, although a series of decent cairns mark the general direction.   Pick your path carefully....many of these rocks are unstable, and the chances of turning an ankle here or there are pretty good.   I suffered that particular fate about 2/3 of the way along...a rock flipped under my foot, giving me a pretty good sprain.  Damn!  I doggedly continued along, falling behind Chris somewhat (the guy's like a human ATV, I swear).  At the south end of the basin, trend right (west) and head upwards.  The small peak you see is actually Capitol's 13,600' subpeak, K2. 

I wheezed my way up, hiking gingerly among the huge rocks.   Chris was waiting for me at just below K2's summit.   There's a bit of a flat spot as the ridge narrows that's perfect for taking a break just before K2.   Chris had been there for about 15 minutes, and had scouted ahead and gave me the report...this was where it got hard.   Basically, here's what you get to do...climb to the top of K2, which is a short Class 3 stretch, accentuated by the exposure....couple thousand feet on each side.  From here, the rest of the route can be easily seen...including the infamous Knife Ridge....a sharp, ~100 foot stretch with extreme exposure.   Despite the solid rock, this is a dangerous, even deadly stretch, and people have died here before.

Quite frankly, I took one look at the approach to the Knife Ridge and the rest of Capitol Peak, and just said "no way, not today". Partly because of my stiff, swollen ankle, partly due to a lingering cold that was making breathing way to hard, but also partly because it just looked too damned scary!!  I think that seeing the monolith of Capitol Peak and its steep dropoffs from that vantrage point was possibly the most intimidating thing I'd ever seen in the mountains!   So yeah, I crapped out.  Not really ashamed to admit it, either.   Better to be overly cautious and know your limits than risk a fatal mistake.

Chris, on the other hand, was feeling just fine, I encouraged him to finish the climb.  I took refuge just below K2, and watched climbers beneath me slowly approach.  About 12 people in 3 groups made it up there within the next half hour, many coming to the same conclusion I did.  Luckily, the morning was warm and calm...a rare occurance in the Elks, and I took advantage of the weather to relax and enjoy the scenery....excellent views of the Maroon Bells, nearby Snowmass Mountain, Pyramid and Castle Peaks.   Off to the north, Mount Sopris and Carbondale.   Beautiful!

After about 40 minutes, a distant "woop" told me Chris had made it to the summit, and 30 minutes later he came scrambling back over K2, reporting excellent conditions.   The Knife Ridge wasn't even that difficult, as he was able to almost walk on ledges on the left side, using his hands only occasionally along the top for stability.   It was now 11:00, and a few ugly clouds were starting to form, so we left the other parties behind and began our descent.   The scramble back to Daly Pass was fairly uneventful, although a few thunder rumbles made us hope the folks higher up weren't anyplace too exposed, just in case a storm came in.

But the weather held off, and the clouds and breeze were a welcome respite from the heat of the late morning.   By noon we had reached the pass again, and by 12:30 we has skidded our way back down to Capitol Lake.  Although the exhaustion was beginning to take it's toll on both of us, we started back down to the trailhead at a pretty quick pace.  Let me tell you, that 400 feet you drop at the start of the hike really comes back to bite you at the end!   After 6 miles of mellow downhill hiking, all of a sudden you're climbing again!   I think we both pretty much swore the entire way back up.   We pulled up to my trusty Blazer right at 3:00, and were off!   Back to Denver for a little recovery and planning for next time!