Pyramid Peak Colorado 14er Hike Guide

Pyramid Peak is a Class 4 “14er” located in Aspen, Colorado. Trail conditions can be challenging on this hike with lots of loose dirt and gravel along the way. Although this is a Class 4 hike, there is not a lot of exposure along the way until you get to the final bit of the hike which has mild to medium exposure in sections. I would recommend Pyramid Peak for intermediate or above hikers.  

Pyramid Peak Quick Facts

Virtual Trail Guide: Pyramid Peak

Pyramid Peak Rating: ★★★ (3.75/5 Stars)

Distance: 10.4 miles RT

Elevation Start: 9,575 ft

Highest Point: 14,026 ft

Total Elevation Gain: 4,377 ft

Estimated Time to Complete: 8-9 Hours RT

Difficulty: Moderate to Difficult What does this mean?

Class: Class 4 – What does this mean?

Season: June – September – If you hike Pyramid outside of this period, be sure to have traction to deal with snow on the narrow ledges section.

Check the Weather Forecast

Directions to Pyramid Peak

Trailhead: Maroon Lake

Getting Here: From the roundabout in Aspen, follow Maroon Creek Road until you reach the entrance station of the park. If you are day hiking, there are chances you will have to take the shuttle bus, but it’s always good to check with the park rangers just in case. If you plan on overnight hiking, there are several lots near Maroon Lake to park at.  You can enter Maroon-Snowmass Trailhead into your favorite navigational device.

Fees: $10 to enter park

Parking: Pyramid Peak has several lots to park at. The length of your trip (overnight vs day) will dictate your parking options. Even if signs say lots are full, it’s always good to check with park rangers before resorting to the shuttle. Most parking lots have non-plumbing bathrooms to use.

Reservation System: Due to heavy traffic, increasing popularity and COVID-19, the Maroon Bells Traverse and all hiking in the area now requires a reservation between May 14- October 24. There are four options for reservations: day (12AM – 4:30PM), evening (5PM – 12AM), 24 hour (Midnight -Midnight) or two days (6AM -6PM [60 hours]). You can read more about and make a reservation here. If you want to hike without a reservation, you can get dropped off between 6AM and 8AM but you will either need to walk, run, bike or get a one way shuttle ticket out of the park.

Summary

Camping: The most popular spot to camp while hiking Pyramid Peak is Crater Lake. Crater Lake has 11 official camping spots to choose from. The first 6 spots are either right on the path or involve a short hike up a hill. Spots 7-11 are a bit farther down past the lake. If all the spots are full, you can camp near the lake as long as you are ¼ mile or more away from the water.  For more information about camping during your trip to the Maroon Bells, visit this page. As of March 2021, a bear canister is required for all food during a camping trip due to high bear activity.

Dogs: Although it could be done with the right dog – 99% of dogs will not do well on this trip, leave them at home.

Make it a Loop: Pyramid Peak is an out and back hike, but if you want to extend your trip, you could do the 4 pass loop or Maroon Bells  which are both in the same area. Be sure to check out Crater Lake as well which is only a short hike past the trailhead for Pyramid Peak. If you are looking for a traverse in the area, check out the Thunder Pyramid Traverse. Our plan was to hike this, but had to change our plans due to weather.

Trail X Factors: Trail Conditions

When hiking Pyramid Peak, you must deal with several long sections of trail that consist of loose dirt and rock. To make things worse, these sections of trail are in very steep sections. Be sure to take your time, give space in between hikers and look out for any flying rocks. Due to the trail conditions and number of goats in the area that can also start a rock fall, a helmet is highly recommended for this hike.

Hike Tip(s): When you hike Pyramid Peak, you will notice a ton of different options to hike, specifically while gaining the ridge and once you are near the green rock. Use your best judgment when there are multiple options and always give space in between hikers. Once you get near the green rock, you will notice another red rock gully that looks like it would be easy to ascend. I would not recommend hiking up this section as the rock is much more loose in here and on the way down, there are a few sections that involve a difficult down climb or could lead you to cliff out.  If the mountain is crowded when you are hiking, be sure to use lots of communication with other hikers about loose rock, no matter how small. Even a small rock can seriously hurt someone if it has enough momentum behind it.

If you are looking to avoid the reservation system – get dropped off with a bike at the Crater Lake trailhead and bike back into town – the bike down to Aspen is mostly downhill and you can just use your climbing helmet to bike – classic two-for!

Best Views: During the hike up Pyramid Peak, I really enjoyed the views of Snowmass, Capitol and the Maroon Bells. Summit views were outstanding to the west and north but were a bit hazy to the south due to wildfires. In addition to the typical landscape views, it was so cool to hike with a variety of mountain goats which made for a ton of awesome photo opportunities.

Pyramid Peak Hike Route

Includes some extra hiking to Crater Lake

Gear Needed

• 14er Day Hike Packing List
• Men’s Trail Runners
• Women’s Trail Runners
• La Sportiva Trango Hiking Boots (Men’s)
• La Sportiva Trango Hiking Booths (Women’s)
• Backpack
• Food & Water
• Optional: Climbing Helmet
• Optional: Garmin inReach
• Optional: Hiking Poles
• Optional: Headlamp
• Optional: Garmin Fenix Watch
• Optional: Camera and Lens
• Optional: GoPro, Joby Tripod
• *Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you

Our Trip to Pyramid Peak: July 2018

Just one week before, I had been in Aspen hiking the Maroon Bells Traverse. The plan, at the time, was to ring the bells on Saturday and then summit Pyramid Peak on Sunday. As it turns out, the Bells were much more difficult than we expected. Tired legs paired with an iffy forecast led us to abandon our plans of hiking Pyramid Peak. One week later, I returned to Crater Lake with Jackie and Juno, eager to conquer Pyramid Peak this time around. I have written in depth about Jackie’s opinion towards 14ers, so the plan was for her and Juno to hike with a friend and their dogs, while her husband Nick and I hiked Pyramid Peak.

Around 3:30AM the next morning, Nick greeted me outside of our tent near Crater Lake and we hit the trail. We had been a bit concerned about weather (it was July in Colorado after all), but the sky was a perfect jet black filled with hundreds of bright stars. We hiked past Crater Lake and easily found the start of the Pyramid Peak trail about .4 miles away from the lake. The weather was not only clear, but somewhat hot for this time in the morning. I was already dripping sweat and decided to unzip my conversion pants to lower my body temperature. While I converted my pants into shorts, we noticed a bright, fast moving light in the sky. We determined it was a space station and were in awe of how fast it was jetting across the dark night sky. It made airplanes in the other direction look like they were standing still. We also noticed how bright the milky way was. We enjoyed both views for several minutes and I was bummed I didn’t have my camera settings in night mode.

Night hiking is great due to cooler temperatures and sometimes stars but also because you have no idea where you are hiking. In this case, it turned out we were hiking up some very steep and boring switchbacks. However, since it was pitch black, we had no idea! We hiked for about an hour up this long slog of trail until reaching “the amphitheater” around 4:45AM. At this point, we knew we had to continue up towards Pyramid Peak which was now right in front of us, but still had several miles of hiking in front of us. The trail disappeared and we entered a massive boulder field, my favorite! For about another hour, we switched between loose, steep rock and a bit of snow that was clinging on for its life. Eventually, we reached the top and headed left towards the bottom of the ridge.

After hiking across the amphitheater, we reconnected with the trail. The next section of trail was awful: steep loose gravel and dirt that basically went straight up to join Pyramid Peak’s eastern ridge. The hiking was slow going and frustrating, we had not even ascended to the ridge line and were already dreading the trip down. Luckily, the views to the north were outstanding now that the sun was beginning to rise. We could see Snowmass Mountain and Capitol Peak in the distance under the morning alpenglow. Slowly but surely, we trudged up the steep trail and joined the ridge of Pyramid Peak. From here, we hoped that the real fun would begin!

Once we had reached the ridge, the trail was very easy to follow towards the southern side of Pyramid Peak. We worked our way across the narrow sections of the traverse with the green rock as our end goal. Although there were a few sections of exposure, the hike so far was much less technically difficult than what I was expecting. After about 20 minutes of hiking, we reached the entrance to the green rock and started up the Class ¾ terrain. The rock was solid and the holds were everywhere, it was very different than the climbing conditions I had a week prior on the Maroon Bells Traverse.

As we worked our way towards the summit of Pyramid Peak, Nick was a bit ahead of me and called back that he saw some mountain goats. Sure enough, there was a younger goat and its mom eating breakfast on the slopes of Pyramid Peak. We watched them for a bit, respecting their space and eventually moved on up the ridge. We wanted to give the goats their space, but apparently they were not interested in that. The smaller goat continued to follow us up the trail, at first being coy and giving us space, but at times following right behind us like a third hiker in our party. Mom didn’t seem thrilled with us, so she went her separate way.

Towards the top of the green rock, we located the turn left we needed to follow to the summit of Pyramid Peak, just a short distance away. The mother goat was standing in the middle of the trail about 100 yards ahead, not sure why we were following her. I tried explaining that we were stalking her, but her English wasn’t so good. From a hiking perspective, we reached probably the most exposed Class 4 move of the hike and the little goat just ran right by us, not exactly thrilled with our pace or climbing skills. Nick and I continued hiking past the Class 4 move and reached the summit about 5 minutes later. Sure enough, the two goats greeted us on top.

For about 5-10 minutes, we had the summit of Pyramid Peak to ourselves (minus the goats), so we took a bit of a break and just soaked in the views. The weather to our west looked great and we were bummed that our original plan of doing the Pyramid to Thunder Pyramid traverse had not worked out. After a little while, another group of hikers joined us on the summit and we decided it was time to start the painful descent.

The descent of the green rock section and traverse back to the saddle of Pyramid Peak was uneventful but slow going. However, once we reached the steep dirt section that took us down to the amphitheater, we ran into several other groups of mountain goats. I had been around mountain goats on the summit of Mt Evans and Quandary Peak, but had never seen so many together in one spot, it really was awesome. The goats made the painfully slow dirt descent more enjoyable and we reached the boulder field without any issues. From here, the hike out was even more painful because the snow we had been banking on descending was too slippery for our boots. Without any form of traction, we were forced to travel through the boulder field which had no trail and lots of loose rocks along the way.

Just before we reached the start of the trail, we ran into another massive mountain goat. This one was a tank and we thought he was the alpha of the group. Built like a linebacker, I would not want to have been charged by it. After sizing us up, we went our separate ways and reached Crater Lake just as the girls were about to pump some water, talk about perfect timing! Overall, I enjoyed the hike up Pyramid Peak but thought it was not technically challenging and wish that trail conditions up to the ridge were better. Although it was not perfect from a hiking perspective, it was unbelievable to spend that much time around the numerous mountain goats on the mountain. Pyramid Peak will forever be a hike I do not forget!

Pyramid Peak Virtual Hike Guide