Maroon Bells: Why the Most Photographed Mountain in Colorado Kills People
Near Aspen, Colorado
The Maroon Bells look like what a fourteen-thousand-foot mountain is supposed to look like. Symmetrical, steep, their dark red faces rising above the lake that mirrors them perfectly in calm morning light. They appear in more photographs than almost any other peak in Colorado. They are also, by most assessments, the most dangerous fourteeners in the state.
The rock is the problem. The Maroon Bells are composed primarily of Maroon Formation mudstone and siltite, a sedimentary rock laid down roughly three hundred million years ago in a shallow inland sea. The formation is not structurally sound. It fractures in thin horizontal layers, and when those layers get wet, they become slick in a way that is not obvious from below. The term climbers use for the rock is rotten, meaning it breaks off under weight in unpredictable ways that structural rock does not.
At least twelve climbers have died on the Maroon Bells since the nineteen fifties, a figure that has made the phrase Deadly Bells common in Colorado climbing culture. Several deaths occurred because a hold that appeared solid simply disintegrated. Several more occurred because climbers descending in afternoon rain encountered the wet mudstone and lost friction without warning.
The trail to the summit exists, and many people complete it. The Forest Service and the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative have worked to improve route marking. But the risk is geological and will not change: the rock is what it is, and it has been breaking off for three hundred million years.
The correct preparation for climbing the Maroon Bells is not more fitness. It is a genuine assessment of whether you trust rock that does not want to be trusted.
