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| Hiking | 4.52 Miles |
2,776 AEG |
| | Hiking | 4.52 Miles | 4 Hrs 23 Mns | | 1.24 mph |
| 2,776 ft AEG | 45 Mns Break | | | |
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| no partners | | I was camping nearby and looking for a solid butt-kicking, so this one looked to fit the bill. Wx was providing cloudless skies with no threat of afternoon storms, so running around on mountain peaks seemed to be a fine idea.
In the years since the description for this hike was written here on HAZ, it seems that the relatively few who summit this peak have congregated onto a common route, which despite it's steepididity and the oxygen deprivation that occurs for flatlanders like myself, I found to be fairly straightforward. In the lower woodlands, the route is thoroughly trodden and beaten down, while the scree areas are well-cairned.
After traversing the lower talus slopes, I took the main gully toward the saddle following the "black line" early on before trying to make some more tolerable switches and cut the grade a bit. Finally I was able to reach a pooey rock band to the right of the black line that provided some more firm hand and foot holds to allow for steadier anchors on breathing breaks. Closer to the top of the helpful rock band, a couple of defined switchbacks lead me to the saddle where I had time to evaluate my decision making and life choices.
Along the entire ascent you can see the summit (or close to it) and it seems that from the saddle to the top isn't too much more, but that is just flat wrong. It's 1000 feet more in under half a mile. That 12-13k level always seems to suck it out of me. The route was generally easy to follow, traversing the talus below the true ridge on the south side, though there are a couple of easy rock bands to get through where multiple use paths diverge. I'm sure one is better than the other, but none are more challenging than anything before it, so there are no surprise cruxes or obstacles to be found higher up.
At the summit, I caught up to a pair of couples who I had seen on the ascent most of the day. One of the couples had married on the summit 9 years earlier and were celebrating their anniversary.
We discussed the route and they had previously taken the full ridgeline similar to shatteredarm's route posted here, but they had long concluded the additional mileage was not worth avoiding the steep ascent.
Summit views covered most of the notable San Juan highlights from Wilson to Handies and the Chicago Basin group. Four-state views included the La Sals in Eastern Utah, Shiprock, the Chuskas, and Pastora could be seen in New Mexico and Arizona.
On the way down, the best part of the day was descending the black stripe. It's essentially a fine gravel scree slope, but the gravel is made of small flat slate-like chips rather than round pebbles. It was like skiing down a nice double black diamond. With no turns. Lol. Each step probably dropped me about 10 feet, and it was a wonderfully controlled slide the whole way down.
From the bottom of the black stripe it was just deliberate steps through the talus until getting back below the treeline and the short trail back to the trailhead.
It had taken just under 2.5 hours to reach the summit (a blistering pace of under 1mph!) and just under 1.5 to get down (I could have done this quicker but didn't want to catch up and crowd the group of four that were on the summit and descended ahead of me).
This was a difficult summit for me. When the comfort and joy of a trail doesn't exist, I'd rather have firm rock and light scrambling on my mountain climbs than so much loose talus. But I also don't do class 4 or higher, so perhaps talus is the better alternative if forced to choose? I carried two hiking poles with me and found that using them was the better decision for about 80% of my steps.
A good challenge, but I'd probably think twice before making a second attempt on this one. |
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| I'm not sure what my spirit animal is, but I'm confident it has rabies. |
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Route Editor
Route Scout
