Some guy at the SuperTopo forum has a closer look at the peaks Ryan claimed to have mastered:
Ryan told me last week that Capitol and nearby Pyramid Peak (14,018 feet) are his favorite climbs so far.
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This is an excerpt from the Denver Post opinion piece on Ryan that discussed his claim of climbing 40 Colorado fourteeners. (...)
Capitol Peak's famous "Knife Ridge", a solid but exposed third/fourth class ridge, is a negligible passage for an experienced rock climber, but would be formidable and very scary for a non-climber. When I climbed it with a very fit partner, but who had little rock climbing experience, I brought a nine mil rope and some nuts and belayed across it. I haven't done Pyramid, but Dawson's authoritative guide cautions about tricky route finding and extremely loose rock. The consensus is that Pyramid and Capitol are two of the most dangerous fourteeners, and this is especially true for novices.
Since the Romney/Ryan campaign has chosen to make his fourteener claims a central part of their campaign to win the state's electoral votes by portraying him as a Coloradan at heart and not really a "flatlander," some climbing fact checking is in order. With whom did he climb them? Was he guided on any of them (this would be prudent on Pyramid and Capitol for any novice)?.
What out-of-state fourteener enthusiast would climb these routes without a camera? It would be highly unusual if there were not photos of him standing triumphantly on Capitol and Pyramid (his "favorite climbs"), if he in fact climbed them as is claimed. [/quote]
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1905949&tn=0&mr=0