Date Climbed: Jan 14, 2023

Trailhead: Rainbow Trail

Trailhead Access: Passenger

Marble Mountain A is a popular 13er winter peak as most of the route stays on the ridge proper and does not go on or beneath terrain that is at or over 30 degrees. This does not guarantee it is completely avalanche safe at all times, but it is one of the more avalanche safe peaks in Colorado.

You can either park at the South Colony Lakes 2wd trailhead and walk 2.5 miles up to the Rainbow trail, or if you have a hearty 4wd vehicle and the road isn’t too snowed over you can drive partway or all the way there. Or, if you’re lucky like us, you can hitch a ride from someone else who has a hearty 4wd vehicle.

Go left (south) on the Rainbow trail until it intersects the ridge leading to Marble peak. Turn right onto the ridge and stay on the ridge proper all the way to the peak. It’s quite straightforward navigation. You’ll probably need snowshoes if you do this trail mid-winter. Since it’s a popular winter route chances are another party has already packed down a trail for you, making the hike much easier.

In our case we had great conditions as 1) it hadn’t snowed hard in that area in 1-1.5 weeks and 2) another party had already packed down a nice trail for us. The hike would have been significantly harder if that had not been the case.

At treeline we stashed our heavy things and switched from snowshoes to microspikes. We also put on our hardshell layers to protect from the wind.

Above treeline there wasn’t much snow at all.

The descent from the summit was pretty straighforward, and our packed down trail made it easy to cruise down to the car.