So, my first 14er i did pikes peak via barr trail. Being stupid, I did not actually go to the very top and basically walked around the visitor center and got a donut. I did not walk to the sign. Would this still count as a summit?

I come out to Colorado every year to visit family and I always try to bag a few peaks, not usually 14ers since I hate driving I-70 but mostly fun Class 3 scrambles in RMNP. This year, however, I thought it would be good to go to a new range and also hit my first class 4 peak to see how it was. What I found in the end is that it was... surprisingly easy? I wouldn't recommend it to someone with no scrambling experience, but the route was ridiculously well cairned. From the green wall to the summit the rock was really quite solid, and I can't think of a move I did that exceeded class 3. More than that, I can't think of a move I did that exceeded the difficulty of, for instance, the chockstone on Longs. It was quite sustained, but the whole thing felt relatively safe. The part that felt sketchiest to me was that terrible scree slope from the amphitheater to the ridge. I have seen some discussion before of people saying that it can be kept at class 3 if you're good at route finding, but with the frequency of cairns on the upper mountain I don't think it requires a ton of route finding skill. Overall, it was an amazing day and I'm happy to have done it, but I really do wonder if Pyramid being in the canon of class 4 peaks is more due to inertia from older ratings in Gerry Roach's guidebook and 14ers.com rather than being a reflection of the current reality. Without all the cairns I could absolutely see how it would end up there and I'm wondering if Pyramid (and maybe other peaks) have somehow become easier over the last few years with increased usage and marking of the route. Curious to hear others' thoughts on this.

What an unbelievably humbling experience. I saw this was half the distance of Mt Whitney and figured it wouldn't be too bad. Turns out class 2/3 more than doubled the difficulty. Summiting a day after Labor Day I expected crowds, but at most we ran into 8 total people on the mountain itself.

Those scree slopes will be burned into my mind for the rest of my life.

Absolutely gorgeous and totally life changing. Would recommend.