The trail is moderately steep and steady for the first mile or so through the dense forest of aspens and blue spruce. A few flat spots mark good places for camping. The trail does a 180-degree switchback and traverses up to the north side of the basin that holds the Angel (if the conditions are good and you want to climb the Angel, leave the trail at this first switchback and bushwhack your way to the base of the snow formation). As the trail clears treeline, you can't quite see the summit yet, but the trail is obvious as it winds up the east slopes to a broad saddle at 13,300'. From here, turn right (north) and follow the cairns to the now-obvious summit, about 0.6 miles from the saddle.

OK, enough of Indian lore...on to mountain climbing! This was another fun late-spring climb! I highly recommend this route up Shavano to anyone with a desire for a good novice/intermediate ski descent or glissade. I anticipated another snowy affair like the one I found on Massive, but it turned out to be not nearly so bad, and the snowshoes stayed in the truck. However, the Angel herself was in fine form, and turned out to be the highlight of the day!

For the start of this trek, I took off from Denver at about 3:45 in the morning (oy!), heading for the Blank Gulch trailhead. To get there, drive to Johnson's Corner (where US 285 and US 24 intersect), and then south on US24 for about 19 miles to Chaffee County 140 (~1 mile north of Poncha Springs). From there, turn right (west) on CC 140 (paved) for 1.7 miles, and then another right (north) on CC250 (dirt) for 4.0 miles. At 4 miles is the National Forest boundary. There is a fork just past the boundary - bear left onto CC 252 for 3.4 miles. This will bring you to the idyllic Blank Gulch area. The whole road is perfectly accessible to any vehicle. There's plenty of camping in this little meadow, if that's your thing. The trail begins at the north end of the area, and is well marked as both the Shavano trail and the Colorado Trail.

I rumbled in about 6:30 and had my gear ready to go at 6:45. To begin, hike north on the Colorado/Shavano trail for about ¼ mile and take a left at the (again) well-marked Shavano trail. The register is a few yards up the trail.

The trail itself meanders through the undergrowth and becomes a bit steep rather quickly. After about a mile or so, it levels out a bit, thankfully, and then follows the runoff streams for a while before switchbacking up the eastern ridge of Shavano. Now, if you're interested in climbing straight up the Angel snowfield (or at least, it's gully), then you need to angle off the trail to the left (south) at some point before the switchback. The best place is about ½ mile or so past the logs used for the stream crossing (you'll know it when you get there). Otherwise, the trail take you to the top of the east ridge, where the snow was patchy but deep in places. The trail fades out right about treeline.

By this time I had joined up with a few other climbers, and, as the trail disappeared, it became a funny sort of committee-hiking. "Where's the trail?","I dunno...maybe over here?", "I think it's over there.", "Oh, screw it, I'm just going straight up the darn ridge." And so on. Turned out that going up the ridge is the right idea, for a while. After making the first big bump above treeline (a point of elevation 11,863 on your USGS map) , the best idea is to get off the ridgeline and cut across the south-east face of Shavano and aim for the south ridge, which is a much gentler line to follow. The last few hundred yards to the summit are a bit of a grunt, but mostly just a lot of boulder-hopping.

So I finally made the summit at about 10:30, just under four hours after starting. Not bad. The only person up there was Alex (I learned his name later), who was one of the guys I'd been sharing the trail with all day. The summit is a pretty small affair - mostly just the high point of a ridge which runs south to a 13er sub-peak, and northwest to Tabagauche Mountain. There had been thickening clouds all morning, so we decided to leave Tabagauche for another time. Since I'd bagged it a couple years ago, I didn't have any problems with that.

Alex and I decided to go ahead and glissade the Angel snowfield. We were both a little tentative about doing it solo, but the thought of having someone else around (just in case), made us decide to go for it. After donning the necessary gaiters and ski pants, we downclimbed from the summit to the tip of the Angel's north arm/wing/whatever. I tried a tentative glissade, just to check the snow. It was just right...slightly thawed from the night's cold, but not too slushy. We glissed down the arm in a couple of minutes, having to stop only once to bypass a few rocks. Then came the main attraction. The glissade straight down the main body - about a 1500-1800 foot drop, I think. With a whoop, I was off! What a blast! The snow was perfect, and there was a sort of main glissade track running right down the middle. There had obviously been many sliders there before us. It was kind of like sitting in a toboggan run - sliding down a deep channel all the way! Within minutes we were at the exit point, wishing for a ski lift or something! Anyways, after a brief trudge though the bottom of the angel, we stopped to remove a few layers, and took off through the bottom of the gully. It didn't take too long to pick up the trail again. By angling down and to the left (north), we had regained the trail within about 15 minutes or so. We were amazed to find ourselves back at the trailhead before 1pm. With the glissade, the descent time was under two hours! Alex and I parted ways, and I gave a little thanks to the Angel of Shavano for presenting herself in such fine fashion this year.