Displaying items by tag: San Juan Mountains

When the forecast in late November calls for sunny skies and temperatures exceeding 60 degrees, there are two thoughts that immediately come to mind: "climate change is real," and "maybe I should go climb a mountain!" Both Grand Turk and Sultan Mountain have been on my radar for many years, ever since I saw them for the first time from Ice Lake Basin in 2013. With the abnormally hot weather we have had in Southwest Colorado this autumn, I figured a quick 45-minute drive to the trailhead at Little Molas Lake would be a great way to spend a Sunday morning after a week of induldging on Thanksgiving leftovers. I also decided to make a stop at Molas Lake to see if I could get a decent photograph of sunrise from there. This turned out to be a great decision, as the clouds were fantastic. The lake was covered in very thin ice, making for a very interesting reflection!

I decided to more or less bushwhack up into the basin between "East Turkshead Peak" and "West Turkshead Peak" from Little Molas Lake. My full GPS file and route are available on Gaia GPS, which is an amazing program! I highly recommend it to anyone with a smart-phone. It is better than a stand-along GPS unit (let's admit it, you all carry cell phones) and is usable in airplane mode. Amazing stuff. You can purchase it here and help support the site.

For this hike and climb, I decided to bring my full compliment of prime lenses and my telephoto lens. I have to admit, my camera gear is so much more manageable now that I am shooting with a Sony mirrorless system. I love it. Camera and lenses used:

• Sony A7RII body (amazingly light and incredible image quality)
• Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8 (amazingly light, sharp, and portable lens)
• Sony Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA (amazingly light, sharp, and portable lens)
• Sony FE 70-300 f/5.6-6.3 telephoto (pretty light for the focal length, decently sharp)

As I hiked up into the basin, the views just got better and better over time and did not let up. I was quite happy to have chosen this route. Snowdon Peak rose above Little Molas Lake behind me in a grand display of early winter.

East Turkshead Peak, which is seen from Molas Lake, marked the right half of my passageway.

Finally, the La Plata Mountains and Engineer Mountain came into view as well.

The Twilights were looking pretty amazing too from this area.

Snowdon demanded my gaze on a frequent basis.

This lone dead tree caught my interest so I framed it with some mountains.

I never get tired of looking at the rugged Needles of the San Juans.

My telephoto lens allowed me to get nice close-up shots of the La Platas too.

And Engineer Mountain...

Below is a view of the route I took up into the basin. Pretty much straight ahead between the two rugged peaks.

A low blanket of clouds pretty much stayed in place all day, making for some interesting lighting conditions.

The patterns in the snow and rock on the Twilights was mesmerizing.

And of course, the Grenadiers, how could I forget about them? They almost made me trip over a rock so many times. I can't stop looking at them. 

The route was pretty straight-forward, with a small trail going all the way up into the saddle. I decided to take my first rest and eat some snacks and enjoy the view south across towards the Twilights and the Needles, including Pigeon Peak and all her friends.

From here I had to make a decision. I could take the direct route and bypass UN 12,899 (seen left below), or go over it. I decided to go up and over it.

East Turkshead Peak dominated my view for much of my ascent of UN 12,899.

From this slopes of UN 12,899, I could pretty much make out every major peak in the Weminuche Wilderness Area.

But then, as if I could not be any happier with the view, the line of sight to the west opened up, revealing all of the Ice Lake Basin 13ers, including Vermillion, Golden Horn, Pilot Knob, and U.S. Grant. What a great view from UN 12,899!

I could also see the remainder of my route for the day and how much further I had to go to reach Sultan. It was expansive! The plan was to hit Grand Turk and then head over the Sultan (left), but I also noticed Spencer Peak (right) was another possible target. Why not?

One last shot of the Needles from 12,899 was in order before heading over to Spencer Peak. I laid down on my stomach to get this one.

All those Ice Lake 13ers were looking mighty fine too...

It appeared that most people bypassed Spencer Peak to get to Grand Turk, based on the trail I could make out on the west slope. 

More awesome views of Pigeon and friends...

I found some interesting vantage points along the way over to Spencer which made for fun shooting of my shadow.

Sultan still dominated the horizon.

More shadow play.

I reached the summit of Spencer Peak in no time and enjoyed the views of Engineer from there.

Looking down at Grand Turk from Spencer revealed another trail that bypassed Grand Turk altogether. I decided to head down and then go up Grand Turk (and I hit all of her sub-summits too).

Perhaps my favorite photo from the hike, I really liked the way the snow lit up in the early morning sun, sparkling in interesting patterns, all leading up to a view of Pigeon Peak and the Grenadiers.

Reaching the saddle between Spencer and Grand Turk made for a fantastic view back at Spencer, which looked quite large from this vantage.

I reached the summit of Grand Turk pretty quickly and gazed over at Sultan, which still looked like it was a long ways away!

There was a nice view of the town of Silverton from Grand Turk, which had many notable 13ers and 14ers in view above it, including Half Peak, Jones & Niagra, Handies, Whitecross, and even the tip of Uncompahgre poking out.

From the eastern-most summit of Grand Turk, looking back across the various sub-summits of Grand Turk and the Ice Lake Basin 13ers made for an impressive vantage and composition.

Grenadiers! :-)

It's just a sea of peaks up here.

Off to Sultan. What a steep slog. Not bad though. She has an impressive stature.

On the way up Sultan, I took many breaks to take shots of the surrounding peak, including Engineer Mountain.

And this tight zoom of Vermillion, Golden Horn, and Pilot Knob...

I was alone most of the day, but about half way up Sultan, I noticed some climbers cresting the ridge between UN 12,899 and Spencer. I enjoyed photographing them with the telephoto lens from my vantage points.

Here they are ascending Spencer.

And no doubt, enjoying the reward of the summit on Spencer.

Another favorite shot from this climb. A tight zoom on Vermillion, Golden Horn, Pilot Knob, and U.S. Grant. I've done 2/4 of those so far.

A tight zoom of the Grenadiers was in order too. 

Pilot Knob and the top of Wilson Peak.

How about a tight zoom on Silverton?

Or Pigeon Peak in black and white? 

Over and above Silverton...

And of course the obligatory self-timer on top of Sultan.

After spending a few minutes on top, I decided to head down so I could catch the Broncos game (what a disgrace they are this season). On the way down, I caught a nice shot of Pigeon framed by Spencer Peak and Grand Turk.

I made really great time down and stopped only a few more times to take photos. I loved the striations in the rock face of East Turkshead Peak which led into the Grenadiers.

And that was it! A lovely local hike and climb of two very dominant 13ers above Silverton, with the addition of the easy UN 12,899 and Spencer Peak. I hope you enjoyed this one? As always, feel free to reach out if you have any questions! Climb on!

13,824 ft. Jagged Mountain has always provided ample intrigue from every angle I have ever viewed it from. It has always looked virtually unclimbable to me, representing the raw essense of Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness Area - untouched and unseen by most, scaled and appreciated by even fewer. I attempted Jagged Mountain once before in September of 2013, where my climbing partner Jeremy and I found ourselves huddled in a tent for four days during the worst flooding in Colorado's recent history. I last saw the summit of Jagged Mountain from my perch atop 13,835 ft. Turret Peak at sunrise last summer. The sun rose just behind Jagged and I felt even more of an affinity for its summit. 

As 2017 unfolded, I saw that the Great American Eclipse would be happening in late August. I penciled in a trip to Wyoming to view the eclipse in totality; however, in July, my friend Natalie Moran posted on Facebook that she was looking for an additional partner for Jagged Mountain and I knew I had to jump on the opportunity to go. Since Jagged requires roped climbing, I only wanted to go with someone with experience on that mountain or with alpine technical climbing. Having climbed Dallas Peak and Teakettle Peak with Natalie in the past, I knew it would be a great trip. The trick of course was finding a way to squeeze in some photographs of the eclipse during this trip. The plan was to meet Natalie and her friend Shawn Poliquin in Silverton on Sunday morning, drive up and over Stony Pass down to Beartown Trailhead, and then backpack up and over Hunchback Pass and then into Sunlight Basin. My pack weighed in at 38.5 pounds, which was pretty good considering I had brought climbing gear, three lenses, and my tripod.

In December, I decided to switch out all of my camera gear for a much lighter experience for backpacking. Previously, I was carrying the Nikon D800 and the holy trinity.

For this particular trip, I decided to bring the following photography equipment:

Camera: Sony A7R2

Tripod: Feisol Tournament 3442 Carbon Fiber Tripod

Ballhead: Photo Clam Pro Gold II

Wide Angle Lens: Zeiss Loxia 21mm f/2.8

Mid-Angle Lens: Zeiss 55mm f/1.8

Telephoto: Sony FE 70-300

Total weight: 8.3 Pounds. 

My total weight using my previous Nikon equipment: 14 pounds. I'll take the  nearly 6 pounds in weight savings!  My legs certainly thanked me considering the round-trip stats for this trip was 30.9 miles!

You can see the full GPS file and stats over on Gaia GPS, which is by far my go-to app for backpacking and mountaineering. It is so insanely useful, I use it on trips like this for many purposes, including planning and route-finding. You can purchase it here and help support the site.

 One aspect of this particular trip that made me nervous was the drive to Beartown. I decided to take my wife's stock 2001 Jeep Cherokee through some encouragement from my co-worker and Bi-Centennial finisher, Terri Horvath. She was right, the road was not too bad, and the two creek crossings were manageable in August. I would hate to see them in early July.

Natalie, Shawn, and I arrived at Beartown at around Noon. At the suggestion of my co-worker, Terri, I surrounded my vehicle with mothballs to deter the infamous marmots that love to chew on spark plug wire assemblies. 

Natalie and Shawn were planning to stay about 8 or 9 days in the Weminuche, where-as I was only planning a 4 day stay, so my pack was much less crazy than theirs.

DAY 1: The approach to Sunlight Basin.

Natalie looked as if she had brought her whole house with her on the way up Hunchback Pass.

The grind up Hunchback Pass was not too terrible as the views were outstanding. We were also racing some storm clouds and wanted to be down into the trees of Vallecito Creek as quickly as possible.

As we wound our way up the switchbacks above treeline, Hunchback Mountain came into view, the last standing peak at the end of the mighty Vallecito Creek basin. I remember climbing Hunchback way back in 2000 when I worked with Colvig Silver Camps - we were taking a group of kids from Highland Mary Lakes all the way to Vallecito Campground. That was the first time I experienced this mighty and amazing area, and I am so thankful I did!

I was excited to see this area again from this vantage point. As we arrived at the summit of Hunchback Pass, the first views of 13,617 ft. "The Guardian" came into view. The Guardian is essentially the last in line and furthest east peak of the mighty Grenadier Range.

As we rounded the corner, both 13,628 ft. Mount Silex (right) and 13,617 ft. The Guardian (left) came into view. It was magical.

As we descended into Vallecito Basin, the weather looked as though it would bring some rain, so we decided to stop to get some snacks and to put on our rain gear. Shawn was pleasantly surprised to find that he had grabbed the wrong pack cover when he left the house. Surprisingly enough, it worked great!

Rain covers on, we continued the gruelling hike down into the basin, with the northern flanks of some of the San Juan's greatest peaks looming in the distance, including Greylock Mountain and Thunder Mountain. 

After negotiating several switchbacks into the forest below, we found ourselves at Rock Creek, which is stained an orange color, I presume from mining activity far above. We crossed without any problems. 

Before long, we found ourselves walking through thick plants covered in Red Elderberries, mixed in with numerous raspberry plants, which made for tasty snacks (the raspberries, not the poisonous elderberries).

Having a lot of luck with the rain so far, we found ourselves at the turn-off for Sunlight Creek. 

We found ourselves at Vallecito Creek and Shawn and Natalie decided to switch to their water shoes. I opted to keep my mountaineering boots on (I really did not have a choice). I managed to cross without getting my feet wet. Shawn took a nice stroll through the creek. 

Shortly after crossing the Vallecito, Shawn and Natalie put back on their normal footwear and we were off to the races. About 5 minutes into the hike, we were forced to cross Sunlight Creek and this time Natalie and Shawn kept their normal footwear on. Both dipped into the water on accident and got wet, so they had to stop and get new socks on. Bummer!

We continued to blaze up the almost hidden trail up Sunlight Creek, which was very dense in spots and really hard to navigate. Do you see a trail? 

This trail was wicked steep and full of overgrowth, deadfall, and crazy twists and turns. At least the view was good at times!

At one point in the trail, before it reaches the creek again, we were tempted to go up to the right; however, the correct right is to go down and cross the creek again and then go right up towards Jagged Mountain. This is the view of the terrain we found when we went too high.

Once across the creek again, the trail was very hard to navigate through logs, wildflowers, and huge boulders. The terrain was steep, steeper than most approaches, and it was relentless.

As you can see, the trail was filled with all kinds of fun obstacles, and Natalie was growing weary with her huge pack. We were ready for camp.

Finally, we found a lovely campsite just across the creek on the right hand side below some large cliffs with a great view of the eastern face of Jagged Mountain. The campsite, if you are looking at a USGS topo map, is located just under the "l" and the "i" in Sunlight Creek at about 11,000 ft. just before the trail begins a sharp climp up to the upper basin.

We set-up our tents, ate dinner, and crashed. The plan was to get up and go up into the upper basin for a warm-up climb of either Knife Point or Peak 10. It rained a little over-night and I was exhausted but ready for the good fight!

DAY 2: Summit of the impressive 13,265 ft. Knife Point and photographing the Eclipse.

The alarm was set for 5:30 AM (not a terribly early start). We welcomed the easier day, having just killed our legs on our 12 mile approach into the basin. The early light on Jagged looked fantastic.

We took our time going up into the upper basin, and appreciated the fantastic views of Jagged Mountain on the way up. Shawn snapped this shot of me hiking in.

A look back towards the huge cliffs above our campsite showcased some interesting clouds that were forming for the day, which did not bode well for my opportunities to photograph the eclipse.

As we climbed up higher, the views of Jagged Mountain only improved.

The late summer color of the Corn Lily plants was a nice complement to the high clouds above Jagged.

Shawn and Natalie admired Peak 10 as it came into view. I marvelled at how insane it looked. It sounded like Natalie wanted to give it a go.

As we climbed up below Jagged, I found the wildflowers quite difficult to avoid pointing my camera at. I loved how these flowers pointed straight up and into Jagged's base. 

At this point, we had to make a decision. Natalie had already climbed Knife Point and both Shawn and Natalie were looking for something challenging. I was looking for a good vantage to photograph the eclipse and had always admired Knife Point from afar, so we decided to split ways - I chose Knife Point and Shawn and Natalie chose to do Peak 10. Our plan was to meet back up in the basin below Jagged and then hike back down together, unless weather looked bad, then we would meet at camp. Worked for me.

Knife Point really caught my attention in 2013, when I saw it from No Name Basin:

I continued my hike up into the upper basin and was enthralled by the huge variety of wildflowers. 14er Sunlight Peak poked out above it all and looked amazing.

The climb up to the ridge between Peak 10 and Knife Point was very steep, but it was eased by the beautiful flowers I found along the way. 

I reached the saddle and the views west towards Pigeon, Monitor, and Animas above No Name basin were great to say the least. I stopped here to take it all in and enjoy a snack.

Unbeknownst to me, Shawn had seen me gain the saddle and snapped some photos of me from Peak 10's flanks.

I scrambled up the ridge and took in the route for Knife Point. It looked like staying east and then going up the blocking face would work great.

The climb up Knife Point was not terribly difficult. I would rate it class 2 with one or two easy class 3 moves mixed in for fun, which were mostly avoidable with careful route finding. The views of Sunlight Peak on the way were breathtaking!

I reached the summit of Knife Point without any problems and enjoyed the amazing views of the Needle Mountains, including Sunlight Peak, Sunlight Spire, Glacier Point, Eolus, North Eolus, Pigeon Peak, Turret Peak, Animas Mountain, and Monitor Peak. What a mighty string of peaks it was to behold!

I set-up my tripod for some more detailed photo work, anticipating the eclypse. Again, unbeknownst to me, Shawn had taken some photos of me from Peak 10, this time of me setting up my tripod and shooting some photos from the summit of Knife Point.

Knife Point might just be one of the more photogenic locations to photograph, as it offers impressive views of some of Colorado's most incredible peaks, including Sunlight, Eolus, and Windom, Pigeon, Turret, Monitor, and Animas, as well as Arrow Peak, Vestal Peak, and of course, Jagged Mountain, as seen in this 250 degree view.

Another fun view of this scene is to take a 360 degree panorama and turn it into a planet. I call this one "Planet Weminuche." 

I was thankful that I lugged my heavy telephoto lens up to the top, as I could get a nice and tight zoomed in view of Pigeon Peak, one of my faves.

And of couse a slightly less zoomed in view of the whole group, including Turret Peak, Pigeon Peak, Monitor Peak, and Animas Mountain. So freaking good looking!

I also really appreciated the tight view of Sunlight and Sunlight Spire. Amazingly, hidden in this photograph is a tiny person I found while exploring the image from home. See the subsequent cropped photo to see if you can spot them.

Zoomed in view of where the person is - it's like Where's Waldo.

I could hear some people celebrating over on Sunlight and probbaly Eolus. Glacier Point, Eolus, and North Eolus looked mighty from this vantage as well.

My gaze kept taking me back over to Arrow and Vestal, which rose high above a small lake between Knife Point and there, with the nasty rock of Peak 10 in the foreground.

Of course, I could not help but study Jagged Mountain - it was just scary and impressive looking from here.

Just before the eclipse, I got in one more shot of Sunlight by itself. I really loved how the ridge sweeps up from below and terminates at the summit like some impressive mountain god.

Unfortunately, clouds began to really move in and obscure my view of the sun just before the eclipse began. Additionally, the clouds did not appear to be too friendly at all; however, I might just be the only person on earth that can say they photographed a solar eclipse from the top of a 13,000 ft. mountain.

Since the weather looked iffy, I decided to descend back into the basin. I could not make out Natalie or Shawn on Peak 10 with my bare eyes or my telephoto lens, so I took my time on my way down, looking for a nice scene to snap some more shots of Jagged paired with some wildflowers - this time, Rosy Paintbrush, probably my favorite flower.

I waited around for about an hour for Natalie and Shawn. I did not see them or hear them, so I decided to go down. One last look back, I made Shawn out on the ridge between Knife Point and Peak 10! He must have scrambled over from Peak 10 (impressive). I was tired and my feet were sore, so I headed back down.

I arrived back at camp and decided to soak my feet in the creek. For some reason, my boots had shrunk since I last wore them and they were really encroaching on my achilles heels. Awww, sweet cold relief!

Natalie and Shawn both came into camp shortly after my arrival and we talked about our climbs. All was well and we made plans for a 4:30 start for Jagged Mountain. My nerves were getting more and more knotted.

DAY 3: 4:30 AM start and climb of Jagged Mountain.

 Beep. Beep. Beep. Time to wake up and crush another Centennial. That's what I kept telling myself anyways. Let's do this! We got up, packed up our ropes and harnesses, re-filled water, and were off! We arrived in the upper basin just in time for some nice sunrise light above Sunlight Peak. No tripod today.

From the upper basin, the plan was to swing around the west face of Jagged and up into the lower basin between Jagged Mountain and Leviathan Peak. We were able to find a nice trail up from Sunlight Creek and made our way up, admiring Peak 10 and Jagged most of the way around the bend.

A nice pink and orange hue eminated from a small tarn below us and between us and Mount Oso in the distance.

Once around the west face of Jagged, we finally found the beginning of the steep climb up to the basin below Jagged's north face. We each decided on a separate route up from here - Shawn went right and around the huge blocky, grassy slopes. Natalie went left and up where some goats were grazing, and I decided to go pretty much straight up the grassy ledges. I think each of our routes had different advantages.

Jagged was impressive from this vantage.

We each reached the area below Jagged's north face at about the same time, which afforded some pretty remarkable views of what lie ahead.

If you had not studied the route before hand, seeing this jumbled mess of rock that was called Jagged would look mighty itimidating.

We more or less found the route all the way over from Jagged Pass to our right and followed the grassy slopes to the first crux of the route, which requires rope for the faint of heart (that's me). We geared up here, and Shawn and I realized we had identicle harnesses. 

Looking up the first crux, it looked pretty straight forward, but Natalie said there was some moves that would make me appreciate having a rope. She was right. I should say from this point forward, I was mostly focused on getting GoPro footage and climbing, and did not take any photos until nearly the end of the climb. Thank you to both Shawn and Natalie for your images, they helped pull off the trip report!

Shawn went first without rope and around a different way altogether without any issues. Natalie led the rope up and placed a small cam about halfway up and then set-up an anchor to belay me from. Here's a shot from Natalie of me coming up.

Here I started my GoPro footage, which I'll admit is a little like being on a rough boat at sea... but hopefully it gives you an idea of what the climb is like.

After the first crux, which had some spicy moves to contend with, we quickly made work of the grassy ledges above us, weaving right and up to the next crux, which consisted of a small 7 foot tall boulder (lower left) which we treated as a chimney, and some easy scrambling up above. I was thankful to be on rope here as I slipped on the very first move (which unroped would have been just annoying but potentially dangerous) trying to get up into the wedge.

The belay station for the second crux offered a nice view of the exposure we were facing on a consistent basis.

The third crux was the spiciest of all, which Shawn decided to free climb up with our rope. It involved some easy moves down low with a really challenging finish requiring some committed movement above big exposure.

The final move kept me stumped for a minute... as documented by Shawn.

Topping out on the third crux felt great. That last move is quite a tough one in my opinion.

Almost there!

The video section for the third crux is HERE.

After the third crux, a quick scramble up revealed the notch which took us to the south side of Jagged. The south side was incredibly exposed - one false step and you would fall to your death without question. We all slowly weaved our way up and around the back side, picking our steps carefully. One move in particular leaves you above nothing but air and a strange jutted out boulder that awkwardly prevents you from easily going around the side of the mountain (as seen just in front of me in the photo below).

The backside was awesome... I loved it! Here's video from the notch between the two sides and the chimney.

We reached the next crux of our climb, the "class 3" chimney, which I would personally rate at class 4, but I might be generous! Shawn seemed to enjoy it quite a bit!

Natalie and Shawn seemed to enjoy watching me squirm up the chimney, which I found to be quite fun!

Upon reaching the top of the chimney, I was really excited. This mountain was easily one of the hardest but also one of the most fun that I've ever done.

Here is the footage of the chimney climb.

After the chimney, only one small section remained, which required some adept scrambling up and then across a chasm. Even though there was only about four feet between one side and the other, it was a very committed move to get across to the last step as seen below.

Here is footage from the final push to the summit.

And finally at last - we topped out! Thanks for the photo Shawn! What an exhilarating moment!

What does a nerdy photographer do when he gets to the top of Jagged Mountain? Take a 360 panorama, of course!

We made a makeshift tripod out of rocks and got a sweet shot of the three of us on top. What a day!

I saw a photo opportunity as well - there was a sweet ledge at the south end of the summit, overlooking Windom, Sunlight Spire, and Sunlight, so I sent Shawn down for a shot of him, and then a shot of me.

Such an awesome spot!!!

I also wanted to get a shot of Natalie with two of my favorite peaks behind her - Arrow Peak and Vestal Peak.

As we were packing up to head down, the clouds broke and shined light on Pigeon Peak. I got excited and photographed it. So awesome.

All good things must come to an end, so we decided to head back down before getting stuck in some nasty weather. It looked like it should hold for us for at least an hour or two. Shawn went first. Here's a shot of him negotiating the first tough move back down. 

I found downclimbing the chimney to be a lot of fun, using my feet and back as leverage for the first and last section.

The tricky move back around the jutted out boulder was a little easier on the way back for some reason.

Directly after the tough move, there's a way to go up instead of around, so both Natalie and I chose that option instead, finding it to be easier.

Back on the north face, we quickly made our way down to the 3rd crux.

We rapped down without any problem, tying together two 30 meter ropes using a water knot. The next section was quite easy to rappel as well.

I found the final rappel the hardest, just due to how long it was down the gully. Here we go! Thanks for the shots Shawn!

A look back up shows just how long the first crux really is!

Natalie stopped to appreciate the view as well as Shawn rappelled down last. The views of Leviathan were awesome from here.

We all made it down safely from the tough sections and got ready for some rain and graupel (you know, that stuff that's like tiny hail). It was good that we avoided a "Graupel rappel." Har har. We all decided to go down the way Shawn came up as it sounded like the most scenic route. It was awesome. We ran into a solo goat while some interesting rain storms passed by.

As we lowered into the basin, the atmospheric clouds added some nice effect to Sunlight and Windom.

It was hard to keep moving with a view like this. Natalie and Shawn forged ahead and are seen bottom left.

As we got lower, we found this really awesome pond with a killer view of Jagged Mountain. I was pumped.

Natalie stopped to take it all in below Jagged.

We finally reached the lower sections just before rejoining the main trail and stumbled on a nice little pond which reflected Sunlight nicely.

We reached our campsite without any issues. Shortly after, it began to rain... and then hail, for a couple of hours straight. It was a lot of water! I was oddly not that tired and decided to try to read and then take a photo of the water on my tent. 

After the storm stopped, I poked my head outside to see the damage. Holy moley! Look at all that ice!

We finally decided to eat dinner and crash, as I was planning on an early hike out the next day, and it would be a tough one for sure.

DAY 4: Hike back over Hunchback Pass to Beartown.

Rise and shine. This would be a tough day. At least it started out well with a parting gift from Jagged Mountain at sunrise!

On the way out, everything, I mean EVERYTHING was wet. The dense vegetation along sunlight creek was almost unbearable. All of my clothes and both feet were soaked. Good times.

I stopped after Vallecito Creek to change socks and rinse out my boots as well as to put on some dry clothes. I chatted with a nice couple camped there and then departed. I kept my head down for most of the way back but got lucky to catch a porcupine sitting at eye level in a tree right next to the trail. I decided to go around.

It took me about 6 hours to get from camp to my car in Beartown, and I really slowed down at Hunchback Pass - I had just run out of gas. It did not help that my water reservoir was leaking and I had to stop frequently to pump water. After cresting Hunchback Pass, I was welcomed with a nice view of UN 13,308 across the valley. A nice parting gift from the Weminuche, my favorite place on earth.

Thanks again to Natalie and Shawn, you guys were amazing partners! Here's to Natalie, who led us up!

Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed this one. Sorry if it was slow to load! Lots of photos!

Backpacking into the wilderness is an activity that is not easily surpassed. There is something about the raw nature of it all, like a tribute to our roots as human beings, which makes it such a powerful experience. Pair that experience with the ascent of two of Colorado's more challenging Centennial peaks, all while being with one of your favorite humans on Earth, and you have yourself a recipe for unforgettable memories. When my friend Silas asked me to go with him to climb Wilson Peak and Mount Wilson again, I knew we would be in for an adventure to remember. Even though I'd already done both Wilsons already, I welcomed the opportunity to help to help him finish off the 14ers, just like he had with me on Pyramid Peak in 2012. Silas and I have done a lot of hiking and climbing together - I counted that this was our 18th summit together since 2011. When I met Silas in 2011, he went by Sarah and had recently had a suicide attempt. Since then, Silas has really turned his life around - he got married, he had a child, and he has made a successful career as a non-profit badass. I'm still getting used to the idea of calling Sarah by Silas, but it is growing on me quickly.

Our hike started with Silas telling me about the recent development of not feeling comfortable in his body as a woman and wanting to transition to a man. At first I was really skeptical just as his wife was; however, when Silas told me after our trip that the decision was official, it washed over me and made me smile. No matter what, I love this person for who they are, man or woman, and really, it just does not matter one bit. Anyways, my guess is that you're here to read about climbing and not Silas, I digress. 

I enjoyed the short drive to Telluride from my new home in Durango. It felt so awesome to be so close to the best climbing and wilderness in the state!

We both eventually agreed on an alternative route into the area since I'd been up there via Navajo Basin and the Rock of Ages Trailhead already and wanted to try something new... plus Bilk Basin offered stunning views of Lizard Head Peak to the south and east and by my calculations offered some pretty amazing photographic opportunities since the Milky Way would be rising behind Lizard Head Peak. So, we settled on Bilk Basin via the Sunshine Mesa trailhead. This trailhead was not terribly hard to find using both Roach's 13er guidebook and other online resouces. Silas met me in Telluride and we drove up to the trailhead together. 

For this particular trip, I opted to bring my Nikon D800, my Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 lens, and my Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 lens. I felt like those two lenses would cover the ranges I'd want to be shooting on this trip, even though they were both quite burly. Nothing really beats the 14-24 for night photography. I also decided to bring my new GoPro 4 with me to shoot some footage using my helmet mount during the ascent of Gladstone. Additionally, I know it sounds crazy, but I'm on my 3rd pair of the La Sportiva S EVO Trango boots - they are so good for mountaineering in Colorado - really there is not a better boot for me and my feet in my experience. I love the higher rubber on the sides because they protect my feet during difficult scrambles and I know I can step anywhere with confidence, plus they are super lightweight. You can pick up a pair from Bentgate, a great local Colorado gear shop.

The hike up into Bilk Basin was pretty outstanding - I really enjoyed this approach and think it is the best of the three that I've done into this area. 

The trail was very full of wildflowers and interesting features like this crazy tall flower.

About 1/2 way up the Basin we encounted a stream crossing, which was not in any of the guidebooks to my knowledge. The location of the crossing was right after some old abandoned mining buildings, which I had read about before and seen on the USGS Topo map.

Instead of crossing the creek where it made sense, I wondered if the trail kept going higher since I had not read about the crossing. We ventured up into the valley further and even found ourselves on the creekbed, but eventually did decide to head across where the log dam was at after the mine.

It was a pretty easy log jam crossing, and it reminded me of the log jam at Snowmass, except not nearly as insane or difficult. I went first as Silas photographed me.

And then Silas followed. It was a bit tricky dropping down onto the logs but in the end it was no problem at all.

The early evening light was quite nice paired with the dark forest and the aquamarine creek. 

Ahhh... Wilderness.

After crossing the creek, the trail was very straightforward, following the creek until eventually going up some switchbacks. The evening light was lovely.

Silas enjoyed the view.

About 2/3 of the way up into the basin, the light began to change dramatically, with clouds hovering over the Mount Sneffels Wilderness Area across the valley from us. The last of the sun illuminated the summits of Campbell, Dallas, Gilpin, and Sneffels. I had to stop to capture it.

Well worth the stop, I think. For this one, I used a Circular Polarizer on my 24-70 lens in order to get greater color and tonal saturation and to reduce haze. Prints of this one are available HERE.

We managed to make it into Bilk Basin at dark and had trouble locating the trail going up to the lake below Wilson Peak (objective/camp possibility #1). We thought the basin would make for a good camping area too but it was super marshy down below and we did not want to get wet. We opted to try to follow where the trail that goes up to the Lizard Head Trail was supposed to be by using Gaia GPS GPS on my phone. Gaia is so amazing! You can purchase it here and help support the site. Since there was no trail to follow, we had to rely on technology. What an amazing application. It shows your location on a USGS map, tracks your progress, and even works in airplane mode. It is the best $20 I've ever spent in my life. We found some campsites just below the Lizard Head Trail and opted to stay there since we were both tired and the lake was a good distance away yet. After setting up my tent, I shot single long exposure of the Milky Way from camp. I kept the shutter open for 241 seconds for this shot using a cable shutter release in order to bring out the foreground. Then I crashed into bed at 11 PM to rest up for our big day of climbing. We set our alarm for 4 AM and declared that our 1st goal would be Gladstone Peak, followed by Wilson Peak.

Silas and I got very little sleep but that is the name of the game when it comes to mountaineering and backpacking. We got out of our tent quickly and started off in the dark at around 4:15 AM. We followed the trail by our campsite south and west for a very short distance and found the Lizard Head trail that comes up from the Cross Mountain trail at Lizard Head Pass and turns west towards Gladstone and Wilson Peak. We followed that trail west but it ended abruptly at the creek after about a quarter mile. According to the map, the trail appeared to cross the creek here and continue up into the basin following switchbacks, but the creek was way too deep and flowing fast for our comfort, so we bushwhacked up the hill, following the creek closely. After about 200 feet of elevation gain, we located the trail again and another creek crossing, which was much more desireable and easy to cross. We crossed here and followed the trail up into the basin in the dark. It was not terribly difficult to stay on the feint trail; however, we did have some trouble from time to time. Luckily, I had Gaia GPS to help me stay on course. After about an hour we found the small lake we had hoped to reach the night before. It was a glorious lake to say the least, nestled at the base of Wilson Peak with views of Lizard Head to the southeast. I set-up my tripod and camera for some blue hour photography (the hour prior to sunrise but before the beloved Golden Hour) and Silas enjoyed the view as well. As I was setting up, Silas was able to photograph some deer that paid us a visit on the ridge behind us.

I was incredibly impressed with this location. The low light prior to sunrise coupled with the huge towering massif of Wilson Peak made for a delightful photographic subject. P.S. on some of my photos in this trip report, you can click on it, which takes you to my photography website, where prints can be purchased. I wanted to disclose that up front so that readers were not expecting to be able to click on it to see a larger version. 

I also combined some shots for a panorama of Wilson Peak (right) showcasing the long ridge over to Gladstone (left of center).

When I finished shooting at the lake, I started packing up my gear when I looked back and saw the clouds changing color. I raced up the hillside back where we came from and set-up for this shot of the sunrise and Lizard Head Peak. What an amazing sight!

Finally, we continued on, having spent about 45 minutes total at the lake. 

I think Silas and I were equally jacked up and elated by the sights from the lake - it was quite tremendous indeed.

Just when I thought I was done using the tripod for the morning, I noticed some alpine sunflowers blooming and the early light of Wilson Peak, well, peaking. I had to stop and get this one. I have always admired the work of Jack Brauer and he has a shot with Wetterhorn Peak and alpine sunflowers that I've always greatly admired, so that was my inspiration for this shot.

As we contined up the basin, we kept our eyes on Gladstone.

The early light from the sunrise was looking good behind us, constantly changing the amazing beauty of Lizard Head Peak. I could not stop looking.

Finally, the sun hit in full force and illuminated all of Gladstone and created some wonderful light for this reflection in the lake. 

Lizard Head Peak kept looking better and better behind us, and I could not help but stop and take photos - it was truly fabulous.

I'm sure Silas was sick of me constantly looking back, but I think we were both pretty stoked to have this basin to ourselves to witness this great sunrise.

Silas kept her gaze above at Gladstone and the nasty, crumbly ridgeline between Wilson Peak and Gladstone. It was intimindating for sure.

More sunrise beauty behind us - this time with the gorgeous Ice Lake Basin peaks including U.S. Grant, Pilot Knob, Golden Horn, and Vermillion showing up to the left of Lizard Head Peak. I was paying close attention to those peaks since my plan was to hit Ice Lake Basin the following weekend. What an amazing thing it is to live this close to such incredible scenery.

Alas, we continued up the long steep slopes of Bilk Basin, heading towards the most southernly weakest point between Gladstone and Wilson Peak.

As we climbed higher into the remote basin, Mount Wilson finally came into view just left of our target on the ridge. We had a lot of snow between us and Gladstone and knew we had some snow travel in our future. Fortunately, we had both brought ice axes and did some mental preparation for some snow travel. I even spent some time refreshing my memory for snow travel by reading a couple pages of Freedom of the Hills before leaving home. Actually, that probably saved my life. More on that later.

Finally, the sun came into view and I took advantage by getting a nice sunstar photo looking back east.

Silas also enjoyed the view of Lizard Head and the Ice Lakes peaks to our east. It was hard not to stare, honestly.

Climbing higher and higher into Bilk Basin and closer to our 1st objective. Silas weighs our route and contemplates life...

The snow travel began in full effect. The snow at this point was quite hard and finding our footing was a challenge. We did not bring crampons, which was fine. We just took our time and slowly ascended carefully.

Just a leisurely stroll up a giant snowfield...

The snow was quite blinding in the early sun, but it was quite warn and there was no wind at all. I had a feeling that this snow would be quite soft later in the day. We contined towards our destination - the notch just above and left of Silas in the photo below.

Without much trouble, we reached the Gladstone Peak - Wilson Peak saddle and enjoyed views of Navajo Basin to the west. I was really happy we chose Bilk Basin - the view on the way up was really quite a bit better than that of both the Navajo Basin and the Rock of Ages routes, in my opinion.

It was time to gear up. We both donned our helmets and mentally prepared for the ridge. I had read a lot of horror stories about this ridge up Gladstone and knew that we needed to remain vigilant throughout the morning to stay safe. I also decided it was a good time to finally use my GoPro that my wife bought me. I attached it to my helmet and we set sail. 

Let's rock! It was good to be doing a hardcore scramble again. I love this type of stuff. Unfortunately, this particular scramble was frought with potential peril. 

The rock on the way up Gladstone was chossy, loose garbage. Every time I looked up to find the next rock to step on, my thought was, "there's that rock, which is held up by that rock, which is held up by that rock, which holds up this rock." It was mentally exhausing to say the least. I tested every step, every hold, and kicked rocks before placing my weight on them. I was also extra careful to watch Silas as he ascended, making sure I could dodge a rock at any time. I'm so glad I did... because as you can see in the GoPro video below, I had a near miss that would have been very harmful, perhaps fatal. This video gives you a taste of the journey up Gladstone. I have about 40 minutes of footage that I condensed into 3-4 minutes. The video is a bit shaky - so be warned! I smoothed it out a bit which caused some strange effects, but I think it a bit more watchable now.

The high risk climbs like this always feel good when you reach the top, but for this one, I had a pretty bad feeling the whole time we were on top because I knew we had to go back down the same way and it was not something I looked forward to. Alas, we enjoyed the summit and our company while some people were yelling in joy from over on Mount Wilson. Wilson Peak loomed in the distance to the north and I was apprehensive to give it a go at this point. I was running really low on water and my body felt a bit tired from the near miss. 

A 360 summit panorama from Gladstone...

One of my favorite features to stare at from up here was Lizard Head Peak and the long shadow it cast below with a sea of amazing mountains behind. Really tough to beat.

Also visible were Dallas Peak, Mount Sneffels (left of center), Teakettle (center), Potosi, Wetterhorn, and Uncompahgre (right of center), all above the town of Telluride. Pretty amazing view from this part of Colorado, for sure.

After enjoying the summit for awhile and posting updates to our loved ones, we decided to head down. For the way down, we stayed high on the ridge the entire way, which proved to be more challenging in some ways but much, much more stable than on the way up, where we decided to dodge left below the ridge (which in retrospect was a mistake). We also decided to see how we both felt once reaching the saddle again and decide on Wilson Peak from there. Since I was basically out of water, it was going to be an interesting decision. The views east were great so I was pretty happy no matter what.

More awesome views looking east on the way down...

Being goofy...

There was a really awesome section on the way down which had a pretty committing move up a sheer face that probably saved us a lot of downclimbing into the nasty section of the ridge. Here is a glimpse of that section which I think was one of the highlights of the whole day.

The way down was tricky to say the least. I had to do some interesting manuevers to get across some sections.

We found ourselves at the top of a gully filled with snow and decided it made sense to fill up my Camelbak with snow and try to get it to melt so that I had water. It actually worked pretty well. We packed the Camelbak very tightly and after awhile it did melt some (about an ounze every 15 minutes. After every sip, I blew hot air back into the tube and the reservior, which helped facilitate the melting process. It was at this point we decided that we would keep going up to Wilson Peak.

To get to Wilson, we had to go around a small un-ranked 13er between Gladstone and the Rock of Ages saddle. Roach recommends dropping into the Navajo Basin side, but we thought that the Bilk Basin side looked more doable on the snow. I don't regret the decision to do that; however, the snow was steep and soft and made for slow travel with our ice axes. At one point, Silas started to slide and had to self-arrest, which worked like a charm.

Crossing snowfields sideways is just awkward and slow. Some sections were totally melted and made for uncomfortable and surprising post holing (which sucked)... and other sections were harder and more dangerous. I really dislike snow travel. 

Silas looked bad-ass though...

We finally made it to the Rock of Ages saddle and committed to going up Wilson Peak. We passed a lot of people on the way, none of which were wearing helmets, which was a little surprising given the looseness and seriousness of this climb. To each their own, I guess.

Near the top of Wilson Peak, Silas got to hang out with a Marmot.

Wilson Peak is probably one of the more challenging and enjoyable 14ers. This was my second time up and I still found it to be quite fun, even after a very long day on Gladstone already under the belt. The rock on Wilson Peak is mostly picked through and the loose stuff mostly kicked or pulled down off the mountain. It still demands respect; however, and the sheer steepness of the final section is a real nail-biter. The consequences of any mistakes would be fatal for sure.

Silas topped out on Wilson Peak just before me and I was able to snap a quick shot on my cell phone of that moment - pretty awesome - two peaks in one day.

I setup the tripod and we got a self-timer shot of us celebrating. 

We spent very little time on top and headed back down. Our plan was to take the Wilson Peak trail down just before the Rock of Ages saddle where it meets up with snow that decends into Bilk Basin and to glisade down from there. The plan, while super smart, was not devoid of risk, as I later found out. We reached the snow field and Silas went first. Silas used his axe and feet to keep the brakes on and made it down about 300 feet without issue. I followed on the same path (mistake #1) and sat down in the snow, readied my axe, and started to go. After mere seconds, my speed increased behind a point where I could slow myself with my axe and I began to worry. I knew that I was out of control and heading straight for Silas. This was bad. I'm not sure why, but I remained calm (maybe I read that in Freedom of the Hills) and did not yell or scream even though I was careening out of control towards Silas. I dug my elbows and feet in - nothing. It hurt like a bitch. Per what I read in Freedom of the Hills for an uncontrolled slide, I flipped over on my chest and planted my axe deep into the snow with the long end going into the snow and my hands firmly holding onto the axe part. It worked! I stopped immediately. Silas said he was going to take video of me but before he knew it, I was right next to him. Yep - that's because I was travelling at like 30 miles an hour down the hillside. Two close calls in one day - not OK. We carefully decended the rest of the snow without incident. I grew tired from the lack of water, and I had also run out of food. Fantastic. Way to prepare! We finally reached running water above the lake at the creek that feeds Bilk Basin and we stopped to refill our water. I had fortunately brought my water filter with me (which I usually don't do) and I began to engorge myself with sweet, sweet water. Too much of it... like a half gallon. Whoops. Now I felt sick from drinking too much water too quickly. Not my best day. When we reached the lake, I stopped to vomit, another first. Nothing really came out but it still sucked just the same. I thought we were done with the shenannagins until we reached the creek crossing from earlier in the morning. Guess what? It was about 3 feet higher from all of the snow melt! Fantastic. We both knew we had to keep going down and look for another way to cross. The below photo shows just how much water was coming down...

Unfortunately, we never did find another place to cross and had to go all the way back down to the start of the basin through Willows and fallen trees. It was a slog. We were both absolutely destroyed, mentally and physically. We had to climb all the way back up about 200-300 feet to our campsite through an area without a trail. Awesome. When we got to the top of the hill to the feint trail leading to our campsite, I vomited again. Excellent. We reached camp and Silas hooked me up with some electrolyte water. That shit works! I was feeling great after about 20 minutes of rest and ready to rock and roll again, excited for photographing sunset. Unbelievable. Sunset looked like it was going to be a total dud. The first "wave" of light after the sun set was pretty dull, some weak yellows and golds in the sky... then out of nowhere I looked back and saw the sky filled with small clouds all turning pink and purple. I ran out to a decent spot out of camp and barely had enough time to snap off this shot of sunset... which faded after only 2-3 minutes. We ate dinner and celebrated our accomplishments.

After dinner, I was totally exhausted. I knew that I really wanted to get some Milky Way photographs over Lizard Head Peak, but was not sure if I could make it long enough awake to pull it off. I slowly hiked up the hill to the south of our camp to find a spot. I was so exhausted after finding my spot to shoot that I set up my camera on my tripod, found a spot to lay down in the grass, and set my alarm on my phone to wake up two hours later so I could not miss the amazing night sky scene. This one did not disappoint - the dark skies of Southwest Colorado are not easily surpassed in quality. The position of the Galactic Core above Lizard Head's impressive massif was just about perfect with the dimly illuminated moon shining just the right amount of light onto Lizard Head Peak. This is a single exposure shot using the Nikon D800, using the 14-24 f/2.8 lens at f/2.8 at 24mm for 15 seconds at ISO 6400 and in-camera noise reduction. 

I also was able to shoot some pretty nice panoramas, sweeping from right to left, getting 13,113 ft. Lizard Head Peak (right), 12,930 ft. Sunshine Mountain (center), and all of the Mount Sneffels area peaks in one photograph, above Telluride. 

Lastly, I went for it all, getting Wilson Peak in the mix in a 360 degree panorama. The clouds were a really awesome compliment to the Milky Way.

I was pleased with my efforts to capture the night sky and head back to camp to get some much needed sleep. We decided to sleep in and then hike out, which meant Silas would have to return another day to get Mount Wilson. The "trail" down Bilk Basin from the Lizard Head trail was non-existent. We had to cross through some really huge fallen trees before we reached the creek again and trail out. Add in yet another memorable experience, why not?

We cruised down the Sunshine Mesa trail in no time, passing some day hikers on the way. We settled on Tellurde Brewing for our final stop to get some brews and to commemorate our unforgettable backpacking adventure before heading home. 

Tellurude Brewing has some fantastic beers! I think my favorite was the Freshwater Double IPA or the Brown on nitro. Yum!

You can view and download my GPS track from Gaia GPS HERE. Hope that it is useful!

This is the first installment of a three part series, exploring some amazing peaks in southwest Colorado near Lake City.

Living in Portland, Oregon has certainly slowed my progress towards climbing the highest 100 mountains in Colorado. Last year, I was only able to summit one mountain on my (at the time) remaining list of 17. This year I wanted to change that a bit. I started planning very early in the summer to spend about a week in Colorado trying to work on finishing my goal. I made plans with my best friend Sarah to head to the San Juan Mountains to tackle some of the more remote peaks I had remaining. Sarah still had the need to complete two 14ers in that area, including Handies and Uncompahgre, so we would certainly be able to string together some plans that included peaks on both of our lists. I flew in to Colorado Springs from Portland on August 19th with my wife. It also happened to be our 9th wedding anniversary. We had dinner with awesome old friends at a new vegan bar in Colorado Springs called the Burrowing Owl. I tried hard to sleep well that night, knowing Sarah would be at my door at 4 AM for our trip to the Lake City, Colorado area to begin our week of summiting peaks in Southwest Colorado.

For this trip we decided to car camp, which turned out to work really well. We played almost the whole trip by ear, not really planning any specific days in advance other than having the knowledge on how to get to various trailheads. I utilized my new F-Stop Loka backpack to ensure my Nikon D800 and the Nikon holy trinity (14-24 f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8, 70-200 f/2.8) were secure and ready for adventure. I have to say in advance that I really liked using this pack for climbing mountains. Enough gear talk though - let's get to the adventure! Bear with me on this trip report, as it is the beginning of a great adventure that is very important to me. The photos progress in quality as we go!

Sarah picked me up at 4 AM and we drove to Gunnison to buy groceries. I was absolutely exhausted from the night before and slept a bit in the car. Of course Sarah took full advantage of this and took a photo (a lot of the photos here are hers).

Upon reaching Gunnison, we decided to buy a bit more food for meals, having only packed some dehydrated meals. We stocked up on tasty supplies and head for Lake City, one of my favorite spots in Colorado. Our first objective on this trip was to get as high as possible on the road leading to the trailheads that service Half Peak near the old ghost town of Sherman. I knew through research that the main trailhead was lower and that there was another trailhead much higher that offered a seclusive alternative route up Half Peak via Cuba Gulch. The advantage of using that upper trailhead would be that we could also use the area as a base camp to accomplish other goals, like Handies Peak, Jones Peak, Niagra Peak, and American Peak. If we did not decide to use that trailhead as a base camp, we could easily go up the road and hit American Basin, so it was a logical place to start. 

Sure enough, we found an incredible campsite just about a quarter mile before the end of the road and the start of the Cuba Gulch trailhead. The campsite offered perfect access to water and was nestled between an amazingly beautiful gully coming down off of the north side of Half Peak and a huge granite rock formation making up the bulk of the northern side of the valley. Having been away from Colorado for a year, I was quite honestly in heaven. I just loved the spot. 

 What a beautiful area.

After setting up our camp site we decided to assess the weather. The time was 11 AM and the weather looked absolutely fantastic. Having summited several high peaks in the afternoon and evening in the past, I was fairly confident that we could climb Half Peak with a late start as long as we kept an eye on the clouds. We both decided that we'd give it a shot and head for the trailhead, a mere 1/4 of a mile away. My main concerns for this week were altitude sickness and my ankle, which I had severely injured in June playing basketball pick-up game at a park near my apartment in Portland. The ankle was still sore and not 100%, but I felt pretty good in my great boots. 

Sarah and I quickly reached the trailhead and shot some photos there, per tradition.

You could rest assured that locating Sarah at any point of the day's adventure would not be a problem. 

You know you miss Colorado when even after 2 minutes on the trail you let out a silly laugh like a child when you hike through some willows. Sarah stopped to see if I was OK and I just said that I was really happy to be in Colorado and she replied, "I figured that was what was going on." The amount of wildflowers on the trail was quickly evident and a very pleasant surprise. I figured they would all be long gone by late August; however, the trail was filled with tons of them!

The Cuba Gulch trail was just about perfect - not too heavily used, but not a total bushwhack. We found it to be a very nice adventurous trail off the beaten path, for sure. The climb up into the gulch was a long one, with the steepest sections happening only right at the start. We stopped only a couple of times - once at a really great footbridge over a waterfall for a requisite selfie.

I have to admit, it was pretty amazing to finally be back in the Colorado backcountry with Sarah - we have climbed so many awesome peaks together.

After about an hour and a half of hiking up through the dense forest and wildflowers, Cuba Gulch began to open up. 

We followed the description provided by Gerry Roach's awesome 13ers book and found the end of the Cuba Gulch trail right before a huge open area of willows. We knew that from that area we'd need to navigate ourselves up a slope to the east following game trails. I opened up my topo map that I had borrowed from my dad and verified our position based on our surroundings and formulated a plan.

The slog up from here was pretty brutal - only faint game trails and lots of willows adorned the hillside before us. We finally prevailed though, and reached a nice plateau with views looking east at the rest of our day. Holy crap - we thought. Is that really Half Peak? That long, insane trek? All the way up that huge valley in front of us? Yep. Check out the huge ridge line! I don't think Sarah was too thrilled. Based on the map, I knew we'd need to cross that huge valley, as high as possible to the right and then hit the saddle between the lower peak on the right and Half Peak on the left. Giddy up.

I spent some time here admiring the view of Half Peak - it really was quite a sight to see. The scale, the distance, the sheer awesomeness of the cliffs of its faces - everything was just so great to behold.

We decided to keep going - there were very few clouds in the sky, which was filled with light layers of haze likely produced by the recent huge wildflowers in the state of Washington. As we continued on the upper reaches of the basin, following the most southern slopes to avoid willows, I spotted a huge moose down in the basin below us, quite a distance away. This was a rare opportunity to utilize my heavy 70-200 lens to photograph him. He was really far away and so he still looks quite small, but you can easily make out his huge velvet antlers. 

As we continued up the long basin, I could not help but admire the view of Half Peak's west face - it really stood out prominently among the area's peaks. This peak really has some very interesting features and looks totally different from all angles. We got to see it from the north a couple days later and it looked completely different.

Sarah caught me taking some photos of Half Peak's impressive cliffs.

It is worth mentioning that Sarah has been training for the Pikes Peak Ascent, while I've been training to taste all of the different beers that the great city of Portland, Oregon can offer. With that being said, I spent a great deal of the hike behind Sarah, which afforded me the opportunity to take lots of photographs of her as we climbed up. 

As we reached the end of the basin's flatter section, we encountered some good up-climbing sections on loose, but very manageable rock. 

The views from the upper basin were of course very good. We appreciated the lower 13ers and high 12ers that were visble from here, including this prominent point to the north of us, which I have yet to be able to identify. 

We continued up very faint game trails until we began to identify some cairns in the distance, which belonged to the Continental Divide Trail, which headed east and south from our junction.

There were a lot of vantage points by which I could photograph Sarah looking really awesome on the ridges and trails. 

The numerous opportunities to photograph the scenes before me offered a nice respite from the steep climbing off-trail.

Once up the steep part of the basin, we stopped for a minute to enjoy the view. At this point I passed the camera off to Sarah to get some photos of me enjoying our surroundings.

It is safe to say that I was really enjoying being in "my happy place" - the high country of Colorado.

It was at this point that Handies Peak (big, center) and American Peak (far left) became visible. It was nice to see a couple of our future objectives.

It might be hard to make out Sarah in this next panoramic photo, but it does help to show the massive scale of the scene before us here. Half Peak, which is very large, is actually just a small peak in the center of frame, with the American Basin peaks to the left. What an amazing approach Cuba Gulch provides!

It was about here where we met up with the Continental Divide Trail, which immediately showcased two mountain bikers. It was quite a surprise to run into these two mountain bikers, and I could only imagine where their journey was taking them.

Half Peak made a nice backdrop for this mountain biker on the Continental Divide Trail.

The Continental Divide Trail made for a nice leading line up to Sarah's visage in the distance. I was really enjoying all of the photography opportunities, but my legs were getting really tired.

As I caught up with Sarah, our gaze was pulled to the east, where some very prominent peaks loomed in the distance. In this case, our view was of the mighty 13er, Carson Peak. 

This was the point of no return. We had reached the terminus of the basin and the start of the huge ramp that was Half Peak. The ramp was at least 2 miles long by my estimate, perhaps even more. Unfortunately, I don't have any map software installed on my Mac to be able to measure the distance accurately; however, I can tell you - it was quite long! We spent a good 60 minutes hiking up this long ramp and about 2/3 of the way up we reached the start of the scrambling ridge section that I was excited  to tackle. If you own Roach's 13er book, you'll recognize this view of Half Peak - the only photograph he shows in the whole book of the peak!

The hike up this beast took a toll on my legs, but I was super pumped to get closer to the top!

We continued up and found ourselves really enjoying the more difficult terrain on between the two flatter sections of the peak.

The clouds were holding nicely, intermixing with the haze to produce some really interesting effects, juxtaposed with the rugged terrain at our feet.

The ridge up Half Peak offered lots of amazing places to enjoy the rocks and view.

After a few more minutes of grunting up Half Peak's barren slope, we arrived at the summit, elated and exhausted. 

I was pretty lukewarm about the light, photographically speaking; however, I think this 180 degree panorama turned out pretty well. This is the view looking south-west-north from the summit. How many 14ers can you spot?

The views of my two favorite peaks - Vestal and Arrow (left and right respectively) were fantastic, only obscured a bit by the haze. I really liked how this black and white shot turned out. Again, nothing super special, but the subject is one of my favorites in the world.

This next photo from the summit was looking north east. I had to really study my google tool to figure out that it was a shot of Quarter Peak in the foreground, and I'm pretty sure that's the 14er Sunshine behind it - or at least, I think that's what it is!

This next one should be easy - Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre!

Sarah was taking our time on the summit to text our wives to let them know were still alive and OK on the summit. I just loved how Vestal and Arrow rose above her to the left.

Sarah of course took the opportunity to take some shots of me enjoying my craft from the top of the world.

Geeking out.

A glance down to the north and west presented some really intersting cliffs on a decending ridge away from Half Peak towards the trailhead - what a magical place.

Next up - a wider panoramic view showing Handies, Wetterhorn, Uncompahgre, Sunshine and Redcloud. Not bad. Quarter Peak dominates on the right.

After basking in the glory of being on top of Colorado's 86th highest mountain, we decided it was time to head down. We did not want to get caught in the dark above tree line and it was already 5 PM. The look down from the top sure was good though...

As the sun began to set, the light just kept getting better and better on our decent. I just loved this next photo - the catwalk of a ridge from Half Peak leads the eye through the bottom half of the frame and up to the more grandeur scene to the north, including the rugged Chicago Basin 14ers and Vestal & Arrow. 

We reached the bottom of the huge ramp in no time at all, but my legs were just destroyed! My ankle was sore, I had taken several Ibuprofen, and I was pretty tired. We had to eat. The huge cairn marking the Continental Divide Trail seemed like a great place to stop.

As the sun went down I found energy levels increase. The light was getting to be really great and I knew that it was going to be a magical sunrise. Sarah caught me taking lots of photos of flowers, which I could not help myself from doing. What can I say - I'm a sucker. I was too lazy at this point to get the tripod out though! Haha!

Sunset was quickly approaching, and golden hour had mostly arrived. The back-lit wildflowers were just incredible.

I found this awesome rock formation and captured a great sunstar right through it, which also illuminated these wildflowers in the foreground. Yes!

Half Peak at sunset just looked magical.

Descending the upper basin was like being in a Western movie - it was so surreal being all alone up there walking into the sunset. 

I found endless opportunities to photograph the scenes we stumbled upon, like this awesome huge stand of wildflowers with the killer sun colors lighting up the sky above.

And then I found these awesome flowers, perfectly arranged before the setting sun. What a beautiful basin to enjoy.

It was really hard peeling myself away from this area - the light, the flowers, the view, the stillness to the air - it was all just so therapeutic. 

I think Sarah was getting a kick out of it also; however, I knew she was hungry and anxious to get back to the trail below.

The colors in the sky were rapidly changing from moment to moment, likely exacerabated by the haze and smoke in the air. I didn't really mind! 

The pinks and purples were starting to color the sky - making for a very pleasing sunset.

As we reached the lower reaches and the end of our view of Half Peak, I found myself gazing back often. It probably did not hurt that the sky was exploding with color.

I even stumbled upon a small patch of Indian Paintbrush - which complimented the scene in a quite lovely way. 

We finally reached the end of the upper basin where the drop off back into Cuba Gulch lay before us. I wanted to stop one last time up there to get some shots of the sunset, which had really produced some great color in the clouds to the west - see!?

One parting shot of Sarah before the downclimb into the nasty willows gave us our final view of Half Peak.

After a very long slog in the dark through Cuba Gulch, we finally reached the car in the dark at 9:30 PM, but not before encountering what we believed were two elk on the road between the trailhead and our campsite. They were quite stubborn and were scaring us a bit with their glowing eyes and strange behavior; however, Sarah's rock-throwing skills (not at the elk, at the ground) scared them off into the woods. We reached camp, cooked dinner, and crashed, despite the amazing night sky that was above. I just could not stay awake to photograph it. Not to worry though, in my next two trip reports for our next days of climbing, there will be plenty of night sky photos to make up for it. For now - enjoy one last parting shot of Sarah's feet while she was doing dishes the next morning - I just know she'll love it!

P.S. I'm pretty sure that Roach lists this hike at 11 miles RT; however, I think it was closer to 12 or 13 miles total.

Coming soon - my trip reports of Jones Mountain and Uncompahgre Peak! Hope you enjoyed this trip report of Half Peak via Cuba Gulch. If you'd like to inquire about any of the photographs, please do visit my photography website, or on Facebook! Feel free to leave a comment below as well. Happy trails!

I had always dreamed of climbing Teakettle Mountain ever since seeing my dad's photo (left) of him standing in the Teakettle's handle back in the 1980's. Naturally, as a small boy, this feat was legendary, epic and awe-inspiring - surely one of the drivers behind my own quest to summit the highest 100 mountains in Colorado. So, when I received an email from Rick McBee asking if I'd be interested in climbing Dallas Peak and Teakettle Mountain, I was ecstatic. The climb up Dallas was remarkable and was probably one of my favorite ascents to date. After conquering Dallas, we were all thirsty for more technical climbing and prepared for an early morning start up Teakettle via the standard route in Yankee Boy Basin. An early morning drive to the start of the climb brought us to a small parking lot and the steep south slopes of Teakettle. Teakettle remained out of view for most of the climb, but it was always there in my mind. I had much less anxiety about Teakettle than Dallas Peak and felt quite confident after our success there; however, I knew it could still pose some significant challenges, especially on the upper parts of the climb prior to the ridge as well as the summit block. The 13,819 ft. summit of Teakettle Mountain is pretty close to the Yankee Boy Basin road as the crow flies; however, the route up takes you through some quite interesting and somewhat dangerous sections of "trail," mostly unmarked and full of loose rock and dirt. 

Our group composition shifted from the prior day - we lost Ben and picked up a new partner named Brad Tucker - a good friend of Rick McBee's from Montrose. Brad was a dentist and somewhat new to climbing high peaks; however, he had done many rock climbs with Rick in the past and was a reliable and experienced climber (much more experienced at roped climbing than me). 

We departed the parking lot at around 5:30 AM and bushwhacked straight up the side of the mountain, following game trails and small drainages until we reached a plateau below the huge and formidable boulder field below the ridge between Teakettle and Coffee Pot. We enjoyed views of Potosi Peak and the rising moon to the east of us on the way up the steep grassy slopes.

We were all spread out across the slopes as to not damage the vegetation on the way up - we never did find a trail on the lower section of the mountain.

lI tried to stick with Natalie Moran so that I had someone to talk to on the way up the mountain - she was full of great stories!

As we climbed up the slopes, views of both Mount Emma and Gilpin Peak were fantastic - the only thing that was missing was some clouds to make the sunrise more exciting; however, I welcomed the opportunity and chance at a storm-free day climbing in the San Juans.

As sunrise hit the valley, the views back across to the south were great. Yankee Boy Basin never seems to disappoint.

Finally, the sun hit the tips of the peaks across the way, briging new light Gilpin Peak and Yankee Boy Basin.

The sun even began touching the tip of Mount Sneffels, which looks a bit less impressive from this vantage point than normal.

As we climbed up the slopes quickly, the rest of our climb came into view - a chossy rock gully. Oh joy.

It was cool seeing the little hole in the rock, which is not to be mistaken for the Teakettle's handle; rather, this hole was just another sweet feature of the area. The goal was to climb that rock gully to the right of the hole and follow a smaller gully up to the left below the hole.

Natalie points out the route to Brad and Rick on our ascent.

As we climbed up the face, more nice light was hitting the peaks behind us to the south.

I spotted a Bighorn Sheep up above us to the east; however, I only had my 24-70 lens on me at the time, so this was as good as I could do to photograph him. He made a ton of noise as he deftly climbed the seemingly impassable terrain of Teakettle Mountain.

We reached the base of the chossy boulder gully - it looked pretty inviting - all I remember is that Natalie was thinking it would be much better to do this in spring when there was snow - I agreed. The rocks were loose and mixed with dirt and scree - a true climber's nightmare.

As we continued to gain elevation at a quick pace, Dallas Peak came into view for the first time - showcasing just how insane of a climb it really is - and how awesome it did feel that we accomplished that sucker just one day prior. It felt good to be knocking out the toughest peaks in Colorado.

The next shot is just to demonstrate how rugged the terrain around us was. It was impressive to say the least.

The higher we climbed, the more we could see out across Yankee Boy Basin. The tip of Sneffels came into view, giving some credence to my belief that it is one of the most impressive mountains in Colorado. This whole area is a sight for sore eyes.

The chossy gully was really loose and steep and at times we had to stagger ourselves to prevent rock fall injury - groups really should take caution in this part of the climb due to how loose the rocks are. We knocked rocks down continuously as we went up.

Here is another view of the ugly chossy loose nastiness we went up.

And here is a view looking down the gully and out across a sea of San Juan peaks.

Once at the top of the gully, the views really opened up and we could finally see Coffee Pot, an unoffical peak to the east of Teakettle and impressive in its own right.

As Natalie emerged from the gully, she also enjoyed the views of Coffee Pot - with Dallas Peak behind her for scale!

And of course, the selfie.

The ridge also afforded us views of Uncompahgre to the east - such an impressive view!

After enjoying the ridge for a few minutes, we decided to move on. The route took us up and over a few more small ridges and the actual mountain finally came into view - such a small little spire of a peak above us.

The trail from here became less solid but easily climbable, just not very sturdy. A lot of loose dirt and worn scree.

From the loose dirt trail, Natalie enjoyed the views, snapping off some photos with her small camera.

We finally reached the infamous Teakettle handle at the base of the technical portion of the climb and we all got a chance to celebrate from inside the handle - a San Juan classic! Brad -

Matt enjoying the views of Dallas Peak.

Natalie - 

While we were busy having fun in the handle, Rick was prepping the climbing gear for our ascent up the 5.3 face of Teakettle Mountain. 

Rick led the climb quite easily and set some bomber protection for us to follow.

Here is a view looking up the face of Teakettle - an impressive spire with lots of great holds.

I went next to last and found the climb quite challenging but highly rewarding. Not nearly as difficult as Dallas Peak or Vestal Peak by any means, but the route was harder than I was expecting. I found the crux quite exhilerating and the summit was insane! It only measured 6 square feet at best and there was room for two or three people tops. The view of Sneffels and friends was outstanding. Who else can say they carried a Nikon D800 up to the top of both Dallas and Teakettle? :-)

I stayed on top while Brad belayed Natalie from below. Here's Natalie topping out. This is seriously how big the summit is. That's my boot.

Here I am giving the two thumbs up on top. Such a strange summit - no room to even get up and move around. No 360 pano this time!

After successful summits from the whole group, we stopped to let Rick bask in the glory in the handle of the Teakettle. This shot is one of my favorites I've taken, ever. I just LOVE it. I hope you do too! This photo one grand prize at the Colorado Springs Creative Photography group's annual photo contest in 2013 and I also submitted it to the National Geographic Travel Magazine's contest a few months ago.

As we descended, we came across a few groups of people and we were all noticing storm clouds starting to build - we pondered a climb of Coffee Pot but after examination of the route by Rick and Natalie, we decided against it. 

The whole party was quite ecstatic for our success - two for two. Here's Rick celebrating our conquest.

Another shot of Rick with the rugged San Juans behind him.

Unfortunately, Brad got really bad altitude sickness on the way down, which was good timing, considering the alternatives. We all helped him down the mountain as he vomited several times throughout the way out. We all really felt bad for the guy, but he was a real trooper! Natalie surely did not let it get her spirits down in this shot of her.

And this final image - hopefully not my last photograph of myself on the side of a Colorado Peak. I've since moved to Portland, Oregon and won't have many opportunities to climb in Colorado. I do have two trips planned this year, but my days of 20-30 peaks in a season are probably over. I'll continue to write about my adventures here in the Pacific Northwest, and I've begun recruiting other writers to keep this site alive, including Regina Primavera. If you are at all interested in contributing and getting trained, and want to reap the potential benefits - fame, fortune, experience (hahaha). Seriously though, let me know! Until next time... 

August 30, 2013
Distance: 11.5 miles (according to GPS)
Elevation: ~5,700 ft (according to GPS)
Time: 10.5 hrs (4.50 am to 3.20 pm)
Team: Rick McBee, Ben, Matt Payne and Natalie Moran

I suppose I never dreamed of climbing Dallas Peak. First viewing it's full stature from the summit of Mount Sneffels in 2010, I was immediately struck by how intimidating the peak appeared and how overwhelmed I was with a sense of fear and surrender. I'm pretty sure my exact words were, "F*!$ that!" :-)

Fast forward three years and a few climbs later and my attitude towards difficult mountaineering feats has shifted quite a bit. Peaks like Dallas are a now a hearty and welcome challenge in my quest for the highest 100 mountains of Colorado. Ever since reading about Dallas as a boy, I've been fascinated with the technical aspects of how to summit it. When you're a kid, everything looks a lot harder than it really is, and this is especially true of mountains. My mountaineering hero, my dad Ray, never did make it to the top of Dallas, having deferred his quest for the highest 100 for a middle-aged devotion to my baseball career, which surely made him father of the year multiple years running. Knowing Dallas was never completed by Ray made it even more magical and impossible in my mind, just as I had thought of Vestal's Wham Ridge before I also completed it successfully in 2010. Exacerbating my Dallas Peak magical thinking was its extremely short-lived climbing history. The thing has quite simply not been climbed a whole lot. As Rosebrough puts it:

"Interest was renewed in Dallas Peak in 1976 when Spencer Swanger made a solo climb of the peak, which was the last of the hundred highest peaks in Colorado which he had not climbed. Swanger felt that of the nearly 300 climbs he had made, 'perhaps Dallas had been the toughest.' Indeed, only two ascents of Dallas have been recorded before Spencer Swanger's, Don McBride and Everett Long in 1934; and Stuart Krebs in 1956." - Robert Rosebrough - The San Juan Mountains - A Climbing and Hiking Guide.

So, when I received an email from Rick McBee about climbing Dallas and Teakettle on Labor Day weekend, I immediately responded with a prompt "I'm all in." Rick and I became acquainted with each other last year when he sent me a message after I completed the 14ers. He purchased several of my photographs for his company after seeing my shots from my Pyramid Peak and Maroon Peak trip report. I knew Rick as a fellow 14er completer and a very awesome dude. He had also named another accomplished mountaineer, Natalie Moran, as being a part of the climbing party, so my confidence in our success was very high. I had heard great things about Natalie from other 14ers.com members and so I felt great about our odds. The plan was to meet at the Mill Creek Trailhead above Telluride on Thursday night and climb Dallas on Friday morning. After Dallas Peak, we'd head over to Ouray and climb Teakettle Mountain on Saturday. Both mountains demanded the use of ropes and a keen ability for rappelling, neither of which being things that I am an expert in. I warned Rick of this and he assured me it was not a problem at all.

I debated a great deal as to which camera lens or lenses to bring for this trip, knowing I would be doing some technical climbing and quite a bit of tricky maneuvering on shaky terrain. I eventually decided to bring the heavier yet versatile Nikon 24-70 f/2.8 attached to my D800. Strapping the camera and lens to my chest vis-a-vis my Lowepro Toploader would not be too difficult, and I could always opt to throw the camera bag into my backpack for the roped sections. Note and shameless disclaimer: those are affiliate links above, so if you like to shop at B+H and want to help keep the site running, please consider using them.  

The drive to Telluride was totally uneventful minus some construction on Highway 50 between Gunnison and Montrose. My last stint through Montrose led me to a Denny's which was not exactly the most vegetarian-friendly establishment. I regretted not doing more research, again, and opted for a trip to Subway before heading to Telluride from Montrose. The trip began well, as I caught up on my email while eating dinner to learn I had won tickets to see Bill Burr at the Pikes Peak Center. Woohoo! A good omen indeed. Per usual Centennial procedure, I consulted Gerry Roach's "Colorado's Thirteeners" book for directions on how to find the trailhead. The description provided by Roach was quite accurate, taking me up an un-marked road exactly 1.9 miles east of the Highway 145 turn-off for Telluride. So far so good. My Subaru Forester made it up the hill without incident and I found both Rick and Natalie's vehicles parked on the side of the road near the end of the Mill Creek Road. I parked my car and introduced myself to Rick and his friend Ben, who was joining us for Dallas. Natalie was already fast asleep in her Forester. I decided to sleep next to them in front of my car, so I would have to test the sleepability of my Forester another night. The stars were out, but only for a brief moment as clouds rolled into the valley.

We all woke up at 4:30 AM for a 5 AM start. I introduced myself to Natalie, after having exchanged several private messages with her over the past couple of years on the 14ers.com forum. I knew that Natalie was from Russia, so it was quite awesome to hear her accent. You see, as my wife will attest, I have a thing for accents. They intrigue me, and I love listening to people talk with them. We began our hike up the trail and were immediately stumped by a marked split in the trail, a common occurrence when you begin hikes in the dark. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your outlook on the accuracy and usefulness of Roach's route descriptions, Natalie had brought a copy of the route description from Roach's book, which clearly stated to take a left at the signed trail junction, which we eventually did after some debate. Here's a photo of that trail junction taken later in the day on our waydown, which is clearly marked as the Deep Creek Trail.

From this junction, Roach writes that you need to hike another .7 miles through three switchbacks to a meadow at 10,000 ft. and then west through the meadow. For some reason we thought there would be another trail to take after finding the meadow; however, that was our misunderstanding. We found the large meadow in the dark, which continued west and then north. A heavy layer of clouds still obscured our views. We knew we were looking for the Sneffels Highline Trail after reaching a ridge at 10,600 ft. We found this trail without any issues as well, but were confused quite a bit in the dark before finding and turning right onto the marked trail junction as depicted below.

The views from the Sneffels Highline Trail were divine in the early morning light, showcasing amazing scenes of the Wilson Peak group to the southwest of us.

The light hitting the mountains above Telluride was absolutely sublime, and made for quite the stunning black and white image.

We followed up the trail through seven switchbacks as described by Roach and then found ourselves wondering when to start climbing up the slopes of Dallas. We found the trail quite easy to follow but often questioned our location and direction, having to consult GPS and map quite often before agreeing on our next course of action.

As the trail wrapped up and around the southern flank of Dallas, views to the north and west continued to wow us as the morning progressed. We were making great time, taking minimal breaks. I tried to stay back a little so I could get some good photos of the route heading up and of our awesome party.

Rick and Ben were setting the pace and keeping us on the right path, with an occasional team discussion about our next moves. Man, it was great having competent mountaineers on this trip. Rick was a strong leader, and Ben was a true champ.

The sky was pretty overcast most of the morning, but that did not stop the sun from lighting up the San Juan peaks above Telluride, across from us to the south.

We continued up the Sneffels Highline trail and enjoyed our views to the south very much. It was a very calm morning, and we were holding onto hope that the weather would improve and that our day would be marked with success on Dallas.

After losing a little elevation and crossing a small creek, the trail wraps around to the south and west and then across a large grassy area below Dallas, where we began eye-balling our route up to the first cliff bands on Dallas' southern flank, shown as a white band in the photo below.

We left the trail at stream coming down from Dallas and fanned out to ascend the very steep grassy slope up to Dallas' cliffs.

As we climbed, a deer was seen above us on a ridge. I did not have a telephoto lens with me, so this is heavily cropped from the D800 (about 100%).

Natalie sneaked a photo of me taking that shot. It was great having some people other than me taking photos!

Telluride was still looking great in this photo of Natalie as we continued up the steep grassy hillside.

And of course Lizard Head, Mount Wilson, El Diente and Wilson Peak (left to right) looked amazing across the valley from us.

Ben volunteered to take a shot of me heading up with my camera, with the great light behind us. Thanks Ben!

Mount Emma was also looking amazing as we ascended to the cliff bands, with early sun behind.

The lower section of this part of the climb was pretty straight forward, albeit rather steep. There was good rock and grass to grip with our boots, and the larger rocks were quite avoidable through here. We found this part of the climb to be relatively simple with little to no route-finding needed. There were numerous areas that had a clear trail identified all the way up to the cliff bands. We stopped a few times to catch our breath and take in the views.

We were a very strong group, so stops were not very frequent. Also, for not climbing together before, we were quite friendly and the group's conversations were very enjoyable. Rick carried the rope while I did the heavy lifting with the camera. Ben and Rick wore their harnesses all the way up, while Natalie and I opted to leave those in our packs until they were needed later.

We continued up the easier section without any issues. When we reached the first set of cliff bands, we were a little unsure where to go until some cairns revealed themselves to us and the route up past the cliff bands to the left became obvious. Also, the climbing become much more exciting as we entered some very fun class 3 sections of rock ledges.

Here's a shot of me heading up the class 3 section, taken by Rick. You can also see the general area we came from, having left the trail about where the trees end near the bottom of the rock gully far below.

As we continued up the lengthy class 3 section, the light below Mount Emma improved, illuminating the awesome stream coming down from above.

We found the climbing in this area to be very fun and enjoyable, with only the occasional loose section of rock. Natalie was a wicked climber and did a wonderful job of surveying the route.

Dallas was quite imposing as we reached higher and higher to the base of the peak.

And damn, the light over on the Wilson's was spectacular in the early morning sun.

The terrain got a little more tricky as we kept heading higher on the southern flank of Dallas, forcing us to find fun and entertaining routes up the mostly solid rock. Here's Natalie powering up one of the final sections of this part of the route.

Once up to the end of the cliff band, the route evened out quite a bit and lead us to the west to a notch referred to as 13,000 ft. notch. Rick led the way.

The route heading up to the notch was very straight-forward, we just followed the cliff band and up a boulder field on a very well-established trail.

A look back on the route we took up to the notch.

As we rounded the corner a bit, the route to the notch became even more apparent - stay as far left as possible without climbing straight up a wall.

We stopped just below the notch to enjoy the views.

The frequent rain over the past few months really greened-up the mountain-sides. Vestal and Arrow were just coming into view in the distance (left middle).

A look back at the Wilson Peak/Mount Wilson massif shows the trail we followed up to the notch.

As we reached the notch and rounded the corner to head up the west face of Dallas, Sneffels and Teakettle came into view, filling us all with a sense of excitement and glory.

Once the notch is reached, the fun begins. We immediately began working our way up a fairly obvious route towards Dallas' summit towers above through loose dirt and rocks.

Teakettle was looking quite awesome. I was savoring it already. I was wishing I had a longer lens to get a nice zoomed-in look at the handle of the kettle, but a super-cropped shot from the 24-70 would have to do.

Climbing up this section was pretty straight-forward, but quite loose. I could see this being a challenging section if there was snow on the ground still or if significant rain had happened prior to the climb. There seemed to be a feint trail all the way up to the class 4 section on the west face. The trail led us up this loose gully that was directly against the face of the peak, and then over some ledges to the west.

Once over the ledge system we reached what was clearly the class 4 section. To our left was an impassable chimney and to our right was a huge drop-off into the basin between Dallas and Sneffels. We worked our way up to the base of the class 4 section and mentally prepared for the steep rocks that awaited us above.

Finding the class 4 section was not hard, but locating a route up it was quite the challenge! I love class 4, personally, so I was very happy to find this section, as I had mostly forgotten about it from the route descriptions I had read. A look back down where we came up showed just how steep the west face was, but it was certainly nothing too hard, in my opinion.

Approaching the class 4 section was not hard, but it was strewn with a lot of loose garbage.

I kept my position as caboose and Natalie fired off some shots of me coming up the class 4 section, which I found to be quite exposed but very solid.

I continued to enjoy the views of Sneffels as we continued up the side of Dallas.

We found the class 4 anchor station, which we figured some people used to rappel down the class 4 on the way off the mountain.

At this point, the route became looser and steeper, but nothing overwhelming in nature. We followed the loose scree up to the first crux below the summit towers.

A look back towards Sneffels revealed some awesome hoodoos on the ridge. What a cool geologic playground.

Almost to the first crux, Ben and I stop to revel in the San Juan glory behind us.

We reached the first crux, which was quite obvious and marked at its base with a cairn. This chimney looked very challenging and I was wondering how I would get up it with my camera on my chest.

Thinking that would not work out so well, I opted to put my camera bag away and head up the same way as the rest of the group. The chimney was low class 5, for sure.

I found ample but difficult handholds on the left side of the chimney and worked my way up to the first ledge seen just above Ben's yellow bandana above.

From this ledge, the route becomes a little less obvious, and the footing is somewhat unstable due to the slope of the rock you are standing on; however, I decided to head to the left through an awkwardly diagonal weakness between rocks.

We did not rope up for this short section, but I think some parties might benefit from a rope at this spot for some added security and peace of mind.

Natalie captured a photo of me coming up the small chimney from above. 

A view from above, shot by Rick:

Here's another view looking up from the bottom, showing the general line you take to reach the top of the chimney.

We also found an anchor at the top of the 1st crux and figured it was used to top rope the chimney. Photo by Natalie.

Once past the chimney, we were a little perplexed as to where to go next. Ben and Rick study the route in this photo from Natalie.

The route was not obvious at all. Roach describes down-climbing from here, but we found no such need or desire. The only way that looked even do-able was a ledge system going up and around the north face of Dallas, which had dramatic exposure as seen in this photo snapped by Natalie. Would you downclimb here? No - thanks though Roach.

Following a lightly worn area of rock up a small series of ledges proved to be the best bet.

At least the views were still holding up.

We found it difficult to find the summit pitch, but some sleuthing by yours truly discovered a dirt gully leading up to a ledge which was at the base of the summit pitch, which looked quite challenging. Rick set-up his rope and got down to business as soon as Ben arrived to belay.

Here is another view of the dirt gully leading up to the summit pitch.

Rick placed only one cam for protection before reaching a belay ledge about 30 ft. above. Our route went right over the first boulder and then up to the right.

After watching Rick tear up the face to the belay station, I took one last look over at Sneffels and Blue Lake before mentally preparing for the ascent up the face. Rock climbing is not really my area of expertise, with only a few other forays into the alpine roped climbing arena in my past. Ben ensured I was tied in correctly and helped clean some mud off my boots.

Natalie got one last photo of me before my first alpine ascent in several years. Adrenaline started pumping.

A look up revealed my route. Nothing too crazy, right? That's Rick perched up there with the white hat barely showing. Oh, and hey, an appearance by the moon.

Up we go into the crazy class 5 crux. I found it pretty tough in muddy mountaineering boots, but managed to find some solid footholds with the help of Ben's finger pointing out some spots for me to try. Photo by Natalie.

A patient and watchful Rick watched from above. I'm not sure if I should be happy or disturbed he got photos of me while belaying. All is well that ends well. All joking aside, Rick was an awesome leader.

Once up the 1st big boulder, climibing became quite a bit easier.

After I unclipped, Rick threw the rope down to Ben.

Ben topped out with ease and enjoyed the views of Sneffels while Natalie roped up.

Natalie made it up to the belay station without any issues and Rick continued up the route. We found the next section to be a bit easier.

Rick went first and got to the top within about a minute. He setup a belay and I went 2nd, deciding to clip in for added security. The final section was exposed but there was a lot more handholds and footholds to choose from and it felt very low class 5, perhaps class 4. I reached the top of Dallas and was overwhelmed with joy. What an amazing climb! Natalie came next, and I was able to document her topping out beneath Rick's "meat anchor."

Natalie was just as excited to get to the top as I was.

The views from Dallas were expansive and incredible. Blue Lake was awash in light. This panorama is pretty huge. In the full resolution version, you can see all of the buildings at Telluride and make out people on top of Sneffels. Click on it to go to my photography gallery.

I was all smiles on top of the world. Only 18 more Centennials to go!

Natalie got a great shot of me after I fired off my summit panorama.

After enjoying some lunch and watching the storms build to the west, we decided to get a group photo and prepare for the rappel off the top.

Rick set up the rappel and everyone gave me a needed refresher on rappelling. Rick went first and I went second. Setting up the rappel for this was a bit tricky. Natalie let me borrow some cord to anchor myself to the anchor and then I got onto the final ledge and roped up. We had about a 90 foot rappel off the west face of Dallas, which contained some interesting rappelling features. First of all, as soon as you step off the edge, the rock inverts and you're off to the races. Second of all, you have to aim for a hole between a giant car-sized chockstone below, about 60 ft down. Natalie got an awesome shot of me moving into the first part of the rappel.

I think the rappel was even more heart-pumping than the climb up. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy rappelling, but it had been at least two years since my last rappel and I was hanging off the side of a huge mountain. Amazing stuff.

Once I popped through the hole below, I was ectatic. I photographed the others coming down through - here's Natalie.

Our fearless leader awaited us below.

Another view of the hole we rappelled through, this time Ben coming down.

After the rappel, we head down pretty fast. I took a nice tumble on the class 3 section on the south slopes and got a few cuts, nothing too crazy. We made it down to tree-line just as rain began to move in.

We reached the infamous meadow that Roach refers to and I decided to get a parting shot of Dallas above.

Back at the parking lot, we conspired for our plan of attack on Teakettle for the following day.

Overall, I would rate Dallas Peak as one of the hardest Centennials (highest 100 mountains in Colorado). The long, steep approach coupled with the challenging route-finding and intense class 5 climbing as well as the bomber rappel make this one of the most demanding peaks in Colorado. So far, I think Dallas would be rated as the hardest mountain I've climbed to date. As far as route-finding goes, don't rely to heavily on Roach. We found his descriptions somewhat lacking, especially on the upper section of the route after the 1st crux. Study our photos carefully and you should have no problems finding your way if you should choose to attempt Dallas. I would highly encourage other climbers to use Natalie's GPX file and reference her trip report as well. Here's a map and a rough hand-drawn route to reference as well.

For more information on travel and lodging in and around Telluride, check out this site, full of great information.

Lastly, I want to thank my amazing climbing partners, Rick, Natalie and Ben. These three were amazing to climb with and I could not be more happy with how our climb went. Next up, Teakettle...

When the dates for the 2013 Perseid Meteor Shower were released, I knew I wanted to schedule some time in a very remote location to capitolize on the opportunity to capture as many meteor shower photos as possible. I did a little research and took a look at my remaining Colorado Centennials that were left to climb and enthusiastically declared that the Ice Lake Basin would be the perfect location. I knew that the trip would be amazing for a photographer, but perhaps boring for someone that is not into photography. I reached out to my friend Ryan Fonkert to see if he would be interested in joining me on a tour-de-Ice-Lake-Basin to shoot the Perseids and to climb Vermillion Peak. Without any hesitation he said he would join me.

Photographing meteor showers has only recently been something I've wanted to do, and my first successful foray into that realm of photography was back in December 2012 for the Gemind Meteor Shower, where I was able to come away with this photo:

 Ice Lake Basin has long been on my radar as a location to visit. Ideally, I wanted to visit the area during the peak of wildflower season due to the idyllic photograpy opportunities afforded at the upper Ice Lake. Unfortunately, the Perseid Meteor Shower falls in mid-August, so this time would have to mostly be a scouting mission for wildflower-style photos.

Ryan and I carved out a chunk of time on our calendars to coincide with the Perseid Meteor Shower peak; we went with Sunday, August 11th through Wednesday, August 14th, knowing the Perseids would peak on Monday night, but also allowing us some flexibility in case of weather or other uncontrollable variables. We made preparations to spend three nights at 11,000 ft and higher, with weather forecasts showing significant rain and/or snow. Sunday afternoon we gathered at my house and departed for the long journey from Colorado Springs to Silverton via Highway 50. I was particularly excited for this trip for a billion reasons, one main reason being that Ryan and I had a ton of interests and world views in common. We were both atheists, both photography geeks, both vegetarians, and both fairly liberal in our political beliefs (don't hold it against us). It was going to be great to be able to chat about all of those awesome topics while camped in one of Colorado's premeir backpacking destinations.

We stopped in Montrose for dinner and wound up at Denny's. How sad for two vegetarians. I'm going to have to do more research before the next time I pass through Montrose needing food. The waitress looked at me really oddly when I asked her to withhold the giant sausage that came with my breakfast skillet, but the food was decent enough and the high sodium would probably be a benefit for the hike in. Since both Ryan and I were mostly heading in to do major photography work, our packs were insanely heavy. I was carrying a similar load as to what I had taken up Grizzly Peak a few months prior, with the additon of a couple more lenses and some large filters for my Nikon 14-24 lens.

Ryan and I were able to reach the turn-off for the South Mineral Creek Trailhead, located just two miles north of Silverton on Highway 550 at around 9 PM. We opted for the short-cut along the Clear Lake Road as described in Roach, which shaves off about a mile and a half total for the hike in and out of the Ice Lake Basin. We loaded up our packs (mine was just over 60 pounds) and head out. We were immediately greeted by the loud and insane waterfall described in Roach, which was highly enjoyable to cross beneath in the dark with 60 pounds on my back.

Here is a full list of photography equipment that I brought on this trip and the approximate weight of each item. I purchased a new tripod and ballhead for this trip alone, because my other tripod, while solid, was quite heavy. The new tripod and ballhead weighed less than half as the old setup, which helped some on weight, no doubt. 

The skies were quite clear on the hike in and we were thinkng we would be afforded some great opportunities to capture some meteor photos on the very first night; however, mother nature had other thoughts in mind. The hike in was quite uneventful until we reached what we believed was the lower Ice Lake Basin. I took out my very bright Brinkman light, which I use for light painting of distant foregrounds for astrophotography. The light was able to show us the area and we headed towards the very upper section of the lower basin. After some wandering in the dark, we stumbled upon an amazing campsite right next to the creek and a huge waterfall nestled at the very edge of the basin. The campsite was equipped with a ready-made bear-bag tree and someone had even salvaged some old mining equipment to form a nice metal bench next to the fire-ring, which we never did use. We setup our camp in the dark quickly so that we could venture out to photograph some meteors; however, by the time we finished setting-up, clouds had already moved into the basin, obscuring our view of the stars above. I was able to get one kind of cool photo of the night skies the first night while utilizing the Brinkman light to illuminate a distant mountain-top to our north east.

After a failed attempt of photographing the night sky, we decided to hit the sack and see what the next day would bring. We awoke pretty early and the sky was already filling with dark clouds. Sure enough, the sound of thunder came early, around 9 AM and we were more or less stuck to our camp area for the duration of the day. Not that we were complaining though, Ice Lake Basin is a pretty great place to be "stuck" for the day. We had pockets of sunshine and decent weather, so we kept going out around the basin for short photography hikes and then back to camp when weather became nasty. This yielded both Ryan and I many opportunities to capture some great images, especially of the ubiquitous waterfalls that were in the lower basin. It was one of the most awesome places I had ever camped, and I am eager to return, no question.

As I mentioned before, our campsite was nestled against the headwall of the upper basin and was directly below a huge series of waterfalls that terminated in a huge field of wildflowers. It was really quite the scene and kept our minds off of the occasional thunder we would hear above. I took advantage of my 9-stop ND filter for taking photos of the waterfall and enjoyed the challenge of the changing light. There were endless opportunities to take photos of the waterfalls and I think I could have probably spent an entire day looking for a better composition or angle. I know Ryan came away with some real stunners too.

Ryan ventured off across the basin to photograph his own waterfalls while I tended to the huge one behind our campsite. 

I tried a variety of spots near our campsite and ventured quite closely to the incredible series of waterfalls that came from the upper basin just above us to the west. I don't generally processing in black and white a lot, so I decided to shoot for black and white instead of color for the waterfalls, focusing more on the available light vs. the colors in the area. It proved to be a great way to study the subject and yielded some fairly good results I think. I loved the textures and lines that intertwined between both the rocks and the moving water and really loved how the ND filter treated the scene with a silky smooth aura.

Black and White waterfalls taken with a 9-stop ND filter - a study in light and texture.

Ryan and I had a lot of time to kill due to the less-than-stellar weather in the basin, so we took turns taking shots of each other. Here's Ryan sporting his Sony and Minolta equipment and myself rocking the Nikon gear on the new tripod.

 The "on again-off again" weather was both annoying and awesome. On one hand, it kept us close to camp, but on the other hand, it kept bringing in some interesting light and photography subjects to keep us busy.  The heavy moisture in the air had created a lot of cool fog-like features in the valley below. Water vapor would rise up from the valley and up into the mountains across the valley from us. As we watched the weather continually change, the temperature kept fluctuating as well, keeping us on our toes and in and out of various layers. It also gave us some opportunity to widdle down on the over-abundance of food we both brought into the valley with us. 

Even though the peak of wildflower season had passed, I was quite impressed with the quanitity and quality of wildflowers in the lower basin. I spotted all kinds of amazing flowers, including the Indian Paintbrush, Rocky Mountain Columbine, Mountain Bluebells, Parry's Primrose, Rose Crown, and more. I felt pretty happy to have brought the 105mm macro lens as I'd always wanted to get a nice macro shot of an Indian Paintbrush, so I ventured off to find the best one near our campsite. I found a few good subjects close-by and captured a few decent shots of one. 

As the light shifted and the day progressed, I kept my eyes on a huge field of purple wildflowers up the hill from us. The sun shifted perfectly and I ran up to get some photos there. I was even lucky enough to get a rainbow in the photo, which was a huge bonus, no doubt. The field also looked out into the distance at one of the more impressive peaks of the area - Sultan Mountain. 

As the storms passed over, I grabbed a self-photo from the wildflower field. What a peaceful place.

 At this point, Ryan joined up with me from the area he was photographing from near the huge string of skinnier waterfalls across the basin from our campsite. He told me I could probably get some awesome shots over there with my ND filter, so I headed that direction, but not before he fired off a hero shot of me carrying my gear.

I headed on over to the fast-moving waterfall system up the hill from us and found some amazing scenery there - wildflowers galore with a raging waterfall, including more of those purple flowers and some Columbine as well.

 I had to climb onto a really precarious island with cliffs and waterfalls on each side to get this shot of these magnificent Columbine.

I headed on back down towards camp and noticed the light continue to improve through sunset. I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to finally get to use my Fotodiox Wonderpana Filter system for the Nikon 14-24. As you may or may not know, the Nikon 14-24 is probably the best full-frame wide angle lens you can get, but it has one major flaw - it is unable to take filters since the lens hood is built into the lens. To compensate for this, you have to get elaborate and complicated filter systems if you want to use filters on this amazing lens. Filters are pretty important for certain applications like the highly dynamic light at sunrise or sunset, where the sky is very bright but the foreground is dark. To adjust for this, you use what are called graduated neutral density filters which basically are dark on top and clear at the bottom, allowing you to expose for the foreground and still get a perfect exposure on the brighter sky. This worked out pefectly for this sunset shot I took from the stream.

After getting some dinner and packing some of our things away, we kept a close eye on the clouds above, knowing that this second night would be the peak of the meteor shower. The clouds began to clear out, so we decided to head up into the upper basin and find a good spot to get shots of the Perseids. The hike up to Ice Lake from our campsite was pretty easy and finding the lake was no problem at all, even in the dark. As we set-up for our photos, we began to get nervous as the clouds began to return and we could see lightning in the distance to our north and west. Not good! Either way, I wanted a few shots from this area at night, so I set-up my tripod and got a few photos. The moon had not quite set yet but was behind some clouds, which made for a wicked silhouette of Golden Horn.

Additionally, the Milky Way made a brief appearance as well with the moon lighting up the passing clouds above.

Having seen some lightning and not really knowing how our luck would last, we decided to make the safe decision and head back down towards our campsite, which was very frustrating. I was hoping to setup at the shores of the lake for my meteor shower photos, so I was a bit disappointed; however, about halfway back down from the upper basin we noticed that the clouds had decided to dissipate, so we found a safe and acceptable spot with a nice clear view to the north and east where the Perseid Meteor Shower was radiating from. We setup our tripods and started the fun of doing a long series over several hours to capture as many meteors as possible. The moon was still high enough to light up the foreground too, so it made for a fairly decent spot to get the meteors from. I was quite pleased with my results, netting 19 meteors in total.

After freezing our butts off for a couple hours, we began to pack up our things, but not before I attempted a vertical panorama from horizon to horizon of the Milky Way. Before I was able to get this shot, I noticed that my lens was covered in condensation, which was a real bummer. I wondered how long it had been this way. I went into my camera to see and only a few shots were ruined. The temperature change from having the camera in my chest pack during the hike up and the very cold night must have caused the condensation - lesson learned!

We head back down to our campsite without incident (other than some super cold toes) and went to sleep, prepared to attempt Vermillion Peak in the morning.

We got up a little later in the morning than I'm normally used to for summit attempts, but we were up really late taking photos of the meteor shower. It is always a challenge for me to balance my desires for mountaineering and my desires for photography. While they make quite a synergistic pair, they also sometimes compete with each other, mostly because of the time factor. We made it up to Ice Lake and were blown away at the beauty of this magnificent lake. I've never seen a bluer lake in all of my life. 

I already knew I wanted to come back to the lake another time of year and get sunrise photos with wildflowers. It was just the most insane spot! 

We found another small lake on our way up towards Vermillion and it was surrounded by wildflowers, including this nice Rose Crown as seen in the bottom left corner. Golden Horn made a nice reflection in the lake, and we could finally begin to make out Vermillion behind it.

The trail ascended up into the upper basin towards Fuller Lake and the views back down at Ice Lake were intense. I was still blown away by the blue hues in the lake.

Climbing further up the trail provided some great views of Golden Horn, which demanded a great deal of respect. The naming of Golden Horn was quite apt, as the sides of it were quite golden indeed.

As we got further up the basin, we found yet another pond with Fuller Peak (left) and Vermillion (right) towering above. In addition, there was a really interesting building up there, or at least the remains of one. We speculated as to what the purpose of the building was, settling on the thought that it was probably used up into the middle of the last century for miners.

The building was in pretty good condition, with an intact roof and even some old bed springs still inside. 

A look back over at Golden Horn revealed that weather seemed to be moving in, but it still seemed pretty spotty. We noted the weather and kept moving up the basin, weaving up a short boulder field above the structure to find a nicely worn trail with numerous cairns. 

 We could make out the nicely worn trail heading up to the saddle between Fuller and Vermillion, and kept heading in that direction. 

The trail brought us up a nice rocky bench towards Vermillion and was a very pleasant hike up. The clouds continued to hold, so we kept on trucking. A look back at Ryan showed I was keeping a pretty good pace. Ryan indicated to me to keep going at my own speed, so I did.

We reached a small stone fortress near the end of the trail and stopped to put on some rain gear as light graupel had begun to come down. The weather still seemed OK but I must admit I was getting a bit nervous. We continued up and lost the trail at the base of Fuller, so we began to weave across a large loose boulder field, which proved to be a huge pain in the butt to cross.

Once we were able to get through the loose and physically rigorous boulder/scree fest, we found ourselves looking down and across at the proper trail. Oh well! We made our way across the boulders to the trail without any issues.

I was able to quickly make it up the saddle - my legs were feeling really great despite the lack of recent climbing I had done this year. From the saddle, I could easily make out a lot of mountains in the area, including the famous Wilsons, the distant Grenadiers and a really awesome looking peak to the south west that was covered in small bits of snow from the recent storms.

A look over at Fuller proved it was not a very long distance from the saddle, and I made tentative plans to come back and grab that peak if time and weather permitted after Vermillion. Looking back down at Ice Lake revealed Ryan's position about a quarter of the way up the trail to the saddle and all of the lakes we had passed throughout the day's journey. What an amazing view it was.

In the distance to the east I could now make out Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn, which is always a nice treat!

From the saddle, the trail leads up the back side of Vermillion. The trail is very well-worn and easy to follow. The rock on the back side was also very interesting. 

A look back down towards the saddle showed just how worn and accessible the trail really was. It was also awesome seeing the Grenadiers in the distance above the ridge.

I reached an obvious end to the trail which had wrapped around the back side of Vermillion on a series of ledges and realized that it was time to head up a steep gully and onto the upper section to the summit, which was all fairly obvious to me at this point.

Once I reached the top of the golden gully, I looked back and down towards the awesome snow-covered mountain, which I later realized was one of the many mountains in Colorado named Grizzly. 

You could also make out Engineer Mountain beyond Grizzly to the south. I was able to reach the summit without any issues and was amazed at all of the green rocks on the summit. I guess it is pretty obvious why the mountain was named Vermillon.

I posed for a few self-portraits using my tripod while I watched the weather nervously. The view of Golden Horn, Pilot Knob (just to my right), Sneffels (in the distance) and other notable San Juan giants was pretty killer from Vermillion. 

I snapped off one more set of panoramas.

A look to the west caught my attention. Out of nowhere a giant storm had developed, with what appeared to be significant precipitation. I hastily packed my things and head back down towards the saddle. I ran into Ryan about halfway back to the saddle, where he had decided to give-up due to fatigue. The storm passed us to the south, fortunately, as seen below.

I reached the saddle fairly quickly and told Ryan I was going to head up and get Fuller really quickly. I made short order of Fully, ascending in just 10 minutes. From there, I was able to survey the basin again, with some interesting views back down towards Ice Lake and back at Vermillion.

On my way back down to the saddle, I was momentarily pleased with the bright colors and contrast between the red rocks on Fuller and the green vegetation below at Lake Hope, which rested at the foot of San Miguel Peak to the west.

I rejoined Ryan at the saddle and we made it back over below the rock shelter that sat beneath Fuller in no time at all.

A look back at Vermillion showed Ryan and the scope of the peak we had just came down from.

Ryan and I were amazed at just how much old mining equipment was just left up there. We saw lots of large tubing strewn about the mountain and even this handy wheelbarrow that looked to be quite old.

Coming down the basin was not a problem and the weather cooperated to our surprise and glee. Ryan and I took frequent stops to take photos of the area.

On the way down I found a very small pond with a large boulder in it that made for a nice landscape scene with Vermillion and Golden Horn reflected in the pool.

 Once back down at Ice Lake itself, we stopped for some quick photos. I found some Rose Crowns and did a little focus stacking to get both the flowers and the distant peaks in focus.

You can really see how this basin would be incredible when the flowers are at their peak. I also found some interesting rocks on the shore to photograph from, and Ryan was able to get a photo of me perched on one of the rocks preparing for a shot.

And here's the shot I was composing.

Once we finished up at the lake we head back down the trail towards camp. We found a great vantage point where we could see Sultan Mountain and the lower Ice Lake.

Here is a map of where we were at and what routes we took on the various days.

As sunset arrived in the lower basin where we were camped, I could not help but notice the great light. Sure enough, the sunset hit the clouds just right and made for a nice light show.

Having one more night in the basin was quite the blessing. The night sky was quite clear on this last night and it made for some great star viewing. I decided to put together a few different star trails, this first one taken looking almost straight up at the sky. The stars form small looking meteors using a special processing technique.

I really enjoy doing star trails with trees in the foreground. I love how the stars weave in and out of the trees.

The following morning was pretty calm as we packed up. There were several marmots out and about that we could photograph while we packed and it made for a nice break between tasks.

We hiked out and ran into a couple that were camped across from us in the basin. It turned out that the woman knew one of my friends that I reguarly climb with - such a small world. It was nice talking with you Becky!

Almost back to the car and we ran into that awesome waterfall again. I had to stop and get a parting shot of it using the 9-stop ND filter.

 On the drive out we noticed some really cool cliff bands in the basin as well, so we had to stop to get photos of that too. It is amazing where nature will allow trees to grow.

We stopped in Silverton for lunch and found a very nice restaurant called the Teller House. We were served some very tasty vegeterian burritos from their friendly staff, who filled our Odell Cutthroat Porter frequently. On the drive home, we bumped into a massive storm cell that was east of Canon City. It was one of the most impressive storm clouds I'd seen in awhile. We also learned that Manitou Springs had severe flooding while we were gone, due to the Waldo Canyon Burn Scar. What a memorable summer it had become.

Lastly, I put together a short time-lapse video from the lower Ice Lake Basin. The first two sequences were created in-camera on my Nikon D800 and the Milky Way sequence was built using iMovie and still images. My friend Nicole Buetti allowed me to use her music for my video. Stay tuned for more time-lapse movies featuring Nicole's amazing music later this year! To hear more of her music, go check out her website!

Day 1: Backpack from Endlich Mesa to Lillie Lake

Day 2: Climb one 13er, backpacking over Trimble Pass and Columbine Pass

Day 3: Sunrise from North Eolus, summit of Eolus and Sunlight

Day 4: Climb of Windom Peak and pack-out

The Weminuche Wilderness Area and the mountains it contains are quite possibly some of the most incredible places on Earth. My first memory of the area was from 2000, when I led a group of 8th and 9th graders from Highland Mary Lakes to Vallecito Reservoir as part of my employment with Colvig Silver Camps. I remember fondly the views of the Needle and Grenadier sub-ranges and never thought in a million years I'd actually climb them. From many vantage points, the mountains in this area look unclimbable and untouchable. Indeed, the Needle sub-range of mountains which consists of Pigeon Peak, Turret Peak, Monitor Peak, Mount Eolus, Sunlight Peak and Windom Peak were some of the few mountains not explored by the Hayden or Wheeler surveys. According to Rhoda of the Hayden Survey, the weather pattern of the Needle sub-range was quite impressive: "Early in the day we noticed clouds hovering about the quartzite peaks, as we had seen them so often before. They never completely veiled all the peaks in the group, but early each day began to circle about them in a restless sort of way, like so many mighty lions about their lair. To us this apparent restlessness suggested a concsiousness of their terrific destructive power, which only awaited a mandate from the 'God of Storms' to be set in motion. We even now held these peaks in awe, as there seemed to be established somwhere in their midst a regular 'manufactory of storms.'¹ Based on this notation, it is no wonder that Mount Eolus is named after the Greek God of Winds. Indeed, the clouds and winds were quite notable this trip, as seen in this preview...

With only five ranked 14ers left to climb, I was eager to finally get into Chicago Basin and climb those restless peaks. The route I chose for this adventure has been in the making for two years now, piecing together various adventures I'd had in the area in the past. In 2001, I hiked from Vallecito Reservoir and to Columbine Pass and climbed Jupiter Peak. In 2000, I did a backpacking trip from the start of Endlich Mesa to City Reservoir. With these two separate trips embedded in my memory, I knew it would be quite an adventure to go from Endlich Mesa to Chicago Basin and back. Adventure indeed.

45 miles round-trip.

16,600 ft. elevation gain.

4 days.

Here's a map of our adventure - please click on it to see the full version (including the rest of the map that you can't see here):

Day 1: Backpack from Endlich Mesa to Lillie Lake; summit two 13ers - 13.1 miles, 4,083 ft. elevation gain.

Two years ago, I had planned to do this trip with my dad. The Chicago Basin 14ers were three of the seven 14ers he had not climbed and I wanted to share those summits with him. Unfortunately, he suffered a freak knee accident this past Christmas and has not been able to hike this year, so I planned the trip with my new friend, Regina. Another set of unfortunate events happened, and I had a last-minute scheduling conflict on the dates Regina and I had chosen for the trip; however, another freak incident happened and I was able to clear some dates on my calendar and go on the trip with another friend, Sarah Musick. I explained the somewhat insane trip plan with Sarah and she bought-in right away, knowing that it would be a monster of an adventure. The plan was to drive to the Endlich Mesa trailhead on Thursday night, backpack as far as possible on Friday, backpack to Chicago Basin on Saturday, climb the 14ers on Sunday and Monday, and backpack all the way out on Tuesday for the drive home. It would be a feat no matter how you looked at it. The only positive to the approach was that we would be starting at 11,250 ft. elevation! All packed and ready to go on Wednesday night, I weighed my pack - 58 pounds! This was going to be painful! Sarah and I had opted to eat well this trip, so the bulk of the weight was in food, but trust me, it paid off later! So - off we went from Colorado Springs for the Endlich Mesa trailhead, which was up a long 9-mile forest service road north and east of Lemon Reservoir near Durango, Colorado. Earlier in the year, I had gotten some great information from Barry Raven from 14ers.com about how to get to the trailead - HERE is the map he shared with me, which I found highly useful in finding the trailhead in the dark.

We slept in Sarah's truck and set our alarm for 5:00 AM, which came after a night of rain. We secured our gear and kissed civilization good-bye. I had pre-prepared some an awesome breakfast for us to cook consisting of bacon, scrambled eggs and hash browns; however, neither of us were remotely hungry, so we opted to pack it in and eat a late breakfast somewhere on the trail. More pack weight! We ascended the Endlich Mesa trail fairly quickly in the early morning and reached the expansive and flat Endlich Mesa in no time at all, with views in all directions.

To the east, the mesa dropped off and revealed some pretty country.

Before too much longer, I was filled with glee as the first views of Pigeon Peak's east face were revealed, as well as the mountains of Chicago Basin. How far away they looked!

I was really excited to finally use my new camera lens, the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 super wide angle. It is the highest-rated and best-reviewed wide angle lens for the Nikon DX format camera on the market. The lens is really hard to get these days because of the earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. I was able to score one from Craigslist and have been itching to get it into action!

The wide angle view was really awesome and I knew I was going to have a lot of fun on this trip. Just in case, I had packed my 18-105mm lens for other shots. Oy vey! More pack weight! Sarah's pack was pretty heavy too, but she was a real trooper!

The mountains behind Sarah were indeed the mountains we were aiming for. Wow. Just wow.

We continued up the mesa, which was a very fun approach. It was mostly flat, with a few sections of up-and-down. The views were great the whole way in.

Sarah was able to capture just how geeked-out I looked for the hike...

We continued on and after enjoying some spectacular views from the mesa, headed on down towards City Reservoir, where we planned to cook some breakfast. The hike down to the reservoir was steep, and we both knew it was going to be one hell of a hike back up at the conclusion of the trip.

We stopped at Durango City Reservoir and enjoyed the early morning light on the water.

The Soup Nazi unpacked and prepared breakfast.

No Soup for YOU!

The breakfast was amazing. Two other backpackers passed us on the trail, one of which I later learned was "alwetend" from 14ers.com. These two guys had on packs that weighed at most 30 pounds and looked as though they were in lightweight ascent shoes. Jealousy set-in. We packed up and headed-out. For some reason, we felt like we were both moving much slower than before. It must have been the bacon. The trail heading up towards our second objective for the day, Lake Marie, was pretty steep (with heavy packs on anyways). We passed by the entrails of something on the way, perhaps a deer? Or perhaps someone with a heavy pack on puked their guts out... thanks Sarah for taking a photo!

At 11:30 AM we reached Lake Marie. Above it to the left (west) was Silver Mesa, where we were heading next. Above it to the north was Florida Mountain, which had at its base City Reservoir #2 aka Lillie Lake.

Climbing up to Silver Mesa was pretty straight-forward. The trail was clearly marked and it followed the USGS topo to a tee. Once on the second mesa of the day, we knew we were committed. We knew that our day's fate was sealed and that we needed to find a campsite somewhere between here and Trimble Pass before dark. I had my sights set on Lillie Lake, which was just below Trimble Pass. While exposed to the elements at such a high elevation, it was a great location to aim for due to the presence of water. So we worked our way up the Mesa at a slow pace. Huge cairns marked the way the whole way in.

Storms moved in and we put on our rain gear. Fortunately, it did not rain for long...

We reached a nice stopping place about halfway up Silver Mesa. Lake Marie was seen far below and the summit of Florida Mountain was seen far above. Here's a nice view of that whole scene in a 360 panoramic, with the lake to the left and the summit to the right.

At this point we were both pretty delerious and tired. Everything was funny.

We soldiered on up Silver Mesa further, which provided literally a highway of silver for us to hike on and up through a large notch.

We stopped again about 3/4 of the way near the Pittsburgh Mine and ate some food. Sarah swears I was meditating in this photo, but I'm pretty sure I was just enjoying the views!

Indeed the views back to the south of Endlich Mesa and Sheridan Mountain were great, and it really put things into perspective in terms of how far we had already hiked. The large map I linked to early in the report really gives you a great idea of this as well.

Break time was over and onward we trekked to Pittsburgh Mine, which I had vague recollections of for some reason. I'm not sure if I had visited this place before, but was awfully familiar to me. At any rate, the mine was great. It still had a great deal of equipment and huge holes to look out for. One spot was easily 30-40 feet deep, and Sarah and I marvelled at it for a few minutes.

The whole area looked like a tornado hit it. Maybe it was the God of Wind, ÆOLUS (actual spelling on the Eolus summit marker)!

In a way, the scene really made you feel like an old miner.

Once past the mine, we were almost to Lillie Lake. We could taste it. Sarah stopped me to ask how much further. I looked at the GPS and told her, "one more mile." This turned out to be the joke of the trip, as it really turned out to be more like two miles since my estimation was as the crow flies. On the way to the lake, I stumbled upon a family (flock?) of Ptarmagin, or snow chicken, which are surprisingly approachable since their only known predator is the golden eagle. This was a rare instance where I did not want the wide angle lens, but it would have to suffice.

We continued on and found several small pools on the way.

We reached Lillie Lake, a mere 10.5 miles from the start of Endlich Mesa trailhead, and found an amazing campsite just above the lake to the west. The campsite was nestled against a large cliff about 50 ft. high, and surrounded on all sides by ramps of rock except to the south, which led to a cliff overlooking the Marie Lake drainage. We were beat and we were starving!

We cooked up our first dinner of the trip - pasta alfredo. It was so good, but I really struggled to put away my half...

Since there were no trees above tree-line (imagine that), I thought of a great way to hang our food on the 50-ft. rock wall. I had read about this method in a trip report posted on 14ers.com for Pigeon Peak and it worked great! We used a large rock at the top as an anchor and suspended the food bags on the rock wall.

Having refueled and rested, I somehow convinced Sarah that we should climb a 13er and watch the sunset from it. So, away we went with small day-packs, water, a camera and a tripod. We made our own trail above the lake and bushwhacked up to Trimble Pass, where our first close-up views of Chicago Basin were found, with much jubilation.

Our attention was turned to the northwest, to Bullion Mountain's 13,182 ft. summit. This would be our target 13er. Bullion is the slightly steep sloped mountain on the left.

Sarah and I cranked it out on weary legs. The views back south were sobering. We had really come a long ways in one day.

We reached the summit of Bullion Mountain in just 40 minutes and realized we had plenty of time and legs left. I set my sights on un-ranked, un-named point 13,190 to the north, as it would provide superb views of Chicago Basin. The ridge looked like it would go just fine, with maybe one tricky section to navigate across.

The views of Columbine Pass and Columbine Lake were great from Bullion Mountain, as were the Chicago Basin 14ers and the mighty 13ers Jupiter Mountain and Grizzly Peak.

About halfway across to UN 13,190, we stopped to admire the constrasted view of Johnson Creek below and the towering wall that is Organ Mountain and Amherst Mountain to the east. Organ Mountain demanded our attention and respect for the remainder of the trip. Sarah was particularly mesmerized by its impressive stature and was drawn to gaze upon it repeatedly. Organ Mountain is the pointy peak one mountain to the left of the furthest mountain on the right-hand-side of the photo (Amherst Mountain).

Indeed, Organ and Amherst were impressive peaks. Back in 2001, when I had backpacked up Vallecito Creek and Johnson Creek with my parents, I had admired them tremendously from below, and I even recalled taking several photos of them with my crappy 35mm camera at the time. I was able to dig one of those up and scan it.

Sarah and I kept on trucking, and encountered a fun yet challenging section of the ridge that required some class 3 climbing. We easily manuvered that section but wondered how fun that would be in the dark later on. The Chicago Basin 14ers were still looking great in the late day sun.

We slogged up the scree slope to the top of UN 13,190 and celebrated. 10.5 miles of backpacking plus two 13ers was a pretty impressive day.

I promptly set-up my tripod on the summit and began taking some photos. Having a tripod on top of a mountain offers some pretty good advantages, starting with consistency. The ease in which photos are to take using a tripod, especially panoramic photos, is well worth the effort. Additionally, the quality of photos increases a great deal. Here's a 360 panoramic from the summit, with the sun cresting over Aztec Mountain (which I wanted to climb so badly, but we ran out of time and energy):

A tripod also makes it easier to do self-timer shots with groups of people, which we took advantage of! This is a view looking north at Chicago Basin and Columbine Lake. You can really appreciate the wide view afforded by my new lens.

For the photography geeks out there, one of the cool things about this lens is that it has 13 elements in 11 groups, which can make for some really great star-burst effects when stopped-down to f/22. The small aperture makes for a really small hole for the light to pass through, and the result is a diffraction spike, which are also explained HERE. Check out my results:

Sarah got to play witness to all this photography geeking-out and documented it with her super-awesome iPhone camera.

The sun continued to set and the moon began to show itself as well. It was a new moon, and it looked really great in the darkening sky. I captured Sarah witnessing her first sunset from the top of a mountain in HDR. Her words: "one of the five greatest moments of my life."

I was a pretty happy guy too, having witnessed only one other sunset from the summit of a mountain, which was from Arrow Peak last year, as documented in THIS trip report.

I tried my hand at my first HDR panoramic of the trip, which I believe turned out pretty well. Chicago Basin looked awesome.

Having witnessed her first sunset from the top of a mountain, Sarah was elated. I took full advantage of this and convinced her that we should stay on top for another hour or two to watch the stars and the milky way (and for me to photograph them). I was really glad she agreed, and we made sure we were bundled up for what we knew was going to become a cold night on the top. A thunderstorm boomed in the far distance behind Chicago Basin, and lit up the clouds behind it in the dark.

Before this trip, I did a little homework. I read some blogs and watched some videos on shooting stars, specifically the work of Ben Canales, who won the National Geographic Traveler's photography contest. This video of his, was very helpful for me, and I learned two tricks from it. The first trick was the 600/focal length rule, which basically states that when shooting stars in photography, to get a shot without blurry stars from star movement, you can shoot a maximum of x seconds, where x = 600/your focal length. In my case, I was shooting at 11mm, so I could shoot almost a full minute exposure without star blur. The second trick I learned was to take test shots at your highest ISO (in my case 26,600) to look for good shots. Check out his video for more! I wanted to get a good shot of the Milky Way with my new lens. At f/2.8, I could really gather a lot of light and it proved worth the investment.

Lastly, I wanted to get some fun star trails over Chicago Basin, and again this proved quite effective. I only did it for about 30 minutes, so it is not as impressive as it could be; however, we needed to get some rest for the big day ahead of us. For this shot, I found the North Star and centered the shot on it. To locate the North Star (which is stationary in the sky, and appears as a pin-point in star trails), find the big dipper. The two bottom right stars that comprise the Big Dipper form a line that points to the North Star.

I also decided to throw together a really short time-lapse of the sunset with the stars. Someday I'd like to do a full day's worth!

We head back over to Bullion Mountain in the dark and were able to find out campsite without any problems. Its funny how good of a memory your mind has, even in the darkness of night. We crashed and slept in, letting the heat of the morning sun wake us up.

Day 2: Climb one 13er, backpacking over Trimble Pass and Columbine Pass to our campsite in Chicago Basin - 800 ft. elevation gain with 1,750 ft. lost, 3.75 miles.

Having a good night's sleep, we were able to quickly pack-up our stuff and eat some breakfast bars. I took a quick hike up to Lillie Lake for one last view before our departure. It was an awesome place and I was happy to have visited it. Lake Marie sat far below, seemingly waving us goodbye, for now...

One cool fact about Lillie Lake - it is the headwaters for the city of Durango's water supply - the Florida River - and sits beneath a relatively unimpressive 13er, Florida Mountain, which we had our sights set on for the start of the day.

A better view of the area, with our campsite at far right -

We packed up and trudged up to Trimble Pass. We left our packs here and strolled up to the summit of Florida Mountain's 13,076 ft. summit to enjoy views of Chicago Basin and Johnson Creek.

Sarah was especially excited to be on top of her fourth 13er, all with me.

It even had a cute little benchmark on the top, which was fairly unique.

Lillie Lake was especially pretty from this vantage, and was nice to see in actual sunlight...

We returned to our packs and began the arduous journey over to Columbine Pass. This section of the hike was quite pretty. We really loved the views from here and only passed two other hikers the whole way over. Looking back on Trimble Pass - we had already come a long ways...

... but we had a long ways to go yet before the top of Columbine Pass. We'd have to return this way? Yikes.

Organ Mountain still drew our attention and made for quite the scenic backdrop to an otherwise desperate slog under the weight of our monstrous packs.

Amazingly, there were still quite a few wildflowers in this basin, and they provided quite a lovely foreground for Columbine Lake and the Chicago Basin '3' -

The flowers also proved to be quite a nice foreground for Trimble Pass and the rugged Organ Mountain.

At 1:30 PM, just three hours after we left camp, we had arrived at Columbine Pass. We were greeted to Chicago Basin by wind, rain, and thunderstorms, which all quickly subsided. Storm clouds hovered over Eolus and heeded the command of the God of Wind.

The path down from Columbine Pass was a fairly straight-forward one, following a very worn trail on somewhat steep scree and dirt.

We descended into the Basin in quick order. I had tentative plans to find a campsite closer to Columbine Pass rather than going down deep into the basin. My reasoning for this was two fold. For starters, there would certainly be less people up higher near Columbine Pass, and I prefer not to camp near a ton of people. Lastly, this would afford an easier ascent from Chicago Basin on our exit day. Indeed, we located a very clean and impacted site just into the trees and called it our home. As soon as we arrived, two mountain goats, a mom and a baby, arrived to greet us to the neighborhood.

It was at this point that I knew that I did not haul my heavy 18-105mm lens in vain. I swapped lenses and took some closer shots of the goats.

Peculiar animals - they always seemed to gravitate to difficult terrain, even in a huge meadow...

And they always seemed to leave behind some of their fur - must be their welcoming gift to us!

I swapped lenses again as we prepared dinner. Tonight's meal would consist of a wonderful medly of jambalaya and sausage. Hell yes.

We devoured the food and Sarah went in and took a nap. I decided to venture up the valley to see what trouble I could get into with my camera. The sun was setting and I knew it might present some fun opportunities. I found a few good spots and gave it a shot.

Here is Aztec Mountain in HDR:

I followed the stream that entered our campsite up a ways and found a nice view of the sunset over Eolus.

I found the water to be a fun subject to play around with.

... in black and white too...

I went back to camp and found a deer was trying to eat our food, which we had not quite hung yet. I shooed the dear off and hung our food and hit the sack. We wanted to get a sunrise summit and hopefully all four 14ers, so we set the alarm for 3 AM...

Day 3: Sunrise from North Eolus, summit of Eolus and Sunlight - 5,112 ft. elevation gain, 8.7 miles.

The alarm sounded and we rose out of the tent like two zombies. Two long days of backpacking had taken its toll on our bodies. We were both sore and tired, and we knew that today was going to be huge. We also knew it would pay large dividends if we committed to going hard and strong. We raced out of camp in the darkness with our headlamps guiding the way. I knew we were looking for a sign that would point us up another trail to Twin Lakes. We dropped 500 ft. in elevation to the valley floor and crossed the fairly large drainage coming down from Twin Lakes. We ran into a solo hiker that was coming up and he said he was heading to Twin Lakes as well. I was certain we had not passed the turn-off yet, so I asked him if he passed it. He did not really know what I was talking about, nor did he know what Columbine Pass was. I was not terribly sold on his sense of direction, but decided we should follow him for a minute to see if we passed the turn-off by mistake. About 20 seconds in, I decided to look again at my map and sure enough, we had not yet reached the turn-off. I tried to signal him but his head-phones prevented him from hearing us, so we turned back and headed down further and found the turn-off within minutes. Up we went without him towards Twin Lakes. We hiked fast. Blazingly fast, considering the amount of miles and elevation we'd done the past 48 hours. We reached Twin Lakes in the dark at 5:00 AM, which felt great. We knew we needed to turn left and find the trail up to Eolus. This proved difficult, so I just went with my instincts based on what I had read. We found ourselves in the right general area below some cliffs without a trail. Through urging from Sarah, I consulted the GPS and sure enough, we were roughly 50 feet below the trail, and we found it right away. We continued up the steep trail towards Eolus and found the ramp leading up to a flat bench before the saddle between Eolus and North Eolus. The sun was just beginning to light the Earth at this point in time, and it was magical. The low light created great silhouettes of Sunlight and Windom, and the small lake below looked like a sheet of glass.

We continued up towards the saddle and found another herd of goats coming down from above. The baby goats were making an adorable high-pitch sound that could only be encapsulated thusly, "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

It was truly a gift to be able to witness these creatures in their true habitat. I know that Chicago Basin trip reports are oft too full of tales of mountain goats, but in this case, I really felt like I witnessed something special, watching these beasts navigate this rugged terrain. I coined a geeky phrase while watching them, which I shared with Sarah - "Wanting to Buy - Mountain Goat skills."

Pushed by the imminent sunrise, we climbed on, and reached the Eolus - North Eolus saddle. The famous Mount Eolus catwalk and Mount Eolus were looking mighty fine in the early light.

Looking up at North Eolus, I knew it would be an incredible vantage point for sunrise, and so we went for it. In true form, we reached the summit just moments before sunrise. I was jubilant and ecstatic, like a kid on Christmas, and I captured some footage on video:

For all of you detractors of HDR photography out there - I decided to showcase both methods (HDR and non-HDR) for this trip report, to please everyone and to demonstrate the difference. You can mouseover / click to see the other version. Here is what greeted us at the summit (mouseover / click to see the non-HDR version).

Slowly but surely, the sun began to poke through the clouds, which were the most insane feature of the scene - absolutely magically dramatic.

This next shot is non-HDR, and one of my favorites from the entire summer.

I was in heaven (probably quite literally). The views of Pigeon, Turret, Monitor, Animas, Arrow, Vestal, Sunlight, Windom and even Rio Grande Pyramid were stunning. Breathtaking. Here's a near-360^o panoramic. Click to see a larger version.

The HDR Panoramic version turned out pretty well too, although in this case, I almost prefer the non-HDR version, except for the fact that the clouds look INSANE in HDR (click for a higher resolution version).

I have about 20 versions of these panoramics that I can't set my mind on picking a favorite, so I decided so share a few more...

As we were both getting pretty chilly, we decided to get a quick group photo and head out. Click / Mouseover to see non-HDR version.

We found ourselves back at the catwalk, which was impressive. Sarah and I immediately began reciting the classic Right Said Fred 1992 song, "I'm Too Sexy."

Once we reached the catwalk, I could not help but sing, "I shake my little toosh on the catwalk" and do a little wiggle. After revisiting that video, I can't help but feel a little light in the feet if you know what I mean...

Sarah was kind of nervous for the catwalk, but her smile said otherwise.

Once past the catwalk, we were greeted by some really fun and intricate ledges on the face of Eolus. I had read some about them, but nothing is quite like being there. It kind of reminded me of the final sections of Crestone Peak, only a ton more of it.

One thing was blantantly clear - a mis-step and you would be tumbling to your death. In a moment's notice, the sky became filled with small snow-flakes, adding to the magic of the morning.

At 7:40 AM, we reached the top of Mount Eolus and it was a great feeling. We felt like we had accomplished so much this trip.

It was so awesome to see Arrow and Vestal again after my trip up them last year. Soon after we summited, a solo hiker joined us on top. I mentioned how awesome Arrow and Vestal looked and he asked me what they were. It made me very sad. My reply in my head: "Only the two coolest mountains in Colorado!" He said I was wierd for climbing 13ers before 14ers... sigh. They are seen just left of me in my summit photo.

The views looking down the valley we had just came up were so awesome. In the dark, you can't fully appreciate the scale of your hike, but once above, it becomes really clear that what you accomplished was huge.

After spending about 10 minutes on top, we decided to head down, knowing we still had more mountains to climb before the weather got really bad. The clouds seemed to be holding in our area, but looked crazy in other areas. Time would be of the essence if we were to get all three in one day. On the way down, we passed one older guy with huge calves that provided the absolute best opportunity for laughter for Sarah and I. I should not jest, but when you're tired, almost everything is funny. He was wearing almost no gear, super old-school boots, no helmet... and socks on his hands for gloves - yep. Also on the way down, we saw a large group closely together, coming up. I was almost certain that it was either a guided trip or some sort of vacation group. As we passed them, they were indeed somewhat odd, but very enthusiastic to be up there nonetheless, and that's what matters! They were coming quite slowly and when we passed them, they were studying maps and routes and 14ers.com printouts. They also appeared to be wearing helmets that were fit for people twice their size. At least they had helmets. You can see them as small dots in the photo below.

The way down was fast. Too fast. I felt like I was at cruising speed. My legs felt great, like adamantium.

Naturally, we passed a solo goat on the way down. Those guys were everywhere!

We rounded the corner and the Twin Lakes came into view, including Needle Ridge, Sunlight and Windom. Spectacular!

I raced down to the lakes, knowing it was just going to be a feast for my eyes and camera. Right as we reached the lake, a friend of mine, Will, who joined me for my hike of Mt. Wilson last month, met up with us. He was gracious enough to refill my Camelbak bladder with purified water. He was planning to head up Eolus, as he had done Sunlight and Windom the day before. I set-up my tripod at the lake and started shooting photos. Will captured the moment.

For this particular scene, I decided to do HDR since the sun was in the scene, which made it really tough to get all of the dynamic light into the shot. I would be the first to agree that this shot is totally over the top, but I love it just the same.

I also decided to get a shot of me at the lake, using the tripod and the self-timer.

Sarah and I refueled by eating some awesome tortillas w/ peanut butter and honey we had made the night before and then set-off for Sunlight. The trail up Sunlight was so awesome. The incredible work of the Colorado 14ers Initiative was obvious here. Huge cairns marked the way. Stone-work that would make a dwarf from Lord of the Rings envious demarcated the trail, paving a highway up the slope of the mountain.

As we climbed, the Twin Lakes were looking as awesome as ever.

And the cairns were monsterous. Looking back at Eolus was also humbling.

Looking up, we still had a ways to go to reach the Sunlight Peak - Sunlight Spire saddle (top - center).

The cairns also provided some good resting areas.

We reached the top of the basin and started climbing up towards Sunlight.

Which became steeper the higher we got, and eventually the paved road provided by CFI ended, and scree began.

I reached the saddle and admired the views to the north of Jagged Peak, which is one of the last few mountains in the highest 100 I have left to climb.

Sunlight was still high above from the saddle, as evidenced by this 360 panoramic photo with Sunlight at center.

At this point, Sarah was feeling light-headed. I knew her stamina was OK but something was going on with her body. I suggested that perhaps she needed more protein, since we had not had much through the day. I pulled out the huge log of summer sausage and we snacked for a bit. Sure enough, within minutes, she felt much better and we were off to the races again. A view back at Windom and the clouds forming above provided motivation.

We reached a small gap during the climb, which was quite challenging to say the least, and I loved the window. The views of Rio Grande Pyramid and "The Window" were great! So this photo is called - "The Window through the Window."

We found ourselves actually using some climbing skills - and head up a small chimney.

We reached the summit of Sunlight Peak at 11:45 AM, which felt pretty great considering we had been on Mount Eolus just 4 hours prior. The weather was moving in though, and that dampened our spirits. An exciting climb like this should feel amazing when you get to the top, but the thought of being electricuted tends to temper those feelings for a while. I managed to get a few panoramics anyways, which show how nasty the storm moving in looked.

Here's a near 360 pano:

And a quick summit photo by way of Sarah, including Sunlight Spire's incredible summit just left of my camera bag:

The air filled with graupel, a sign that things were not going to be good - weather-wise. We reached the Sunlight Peak - Sunlight Spire saddle in quick order, passing several people still heading up.  Not sure if that is the best idea to head up when the storm is depositing ice on the rocks, but that's just me. Here's my reaction to that!

Here comes the weather!

The crazy kids in tennis shoes and cotton hoodies kept going up through the graupel and thunder, but we booked it down to safety and took refuge.

Luckily for our friends in cotton and tennis shoes, the weather let up, dumping only light amounts of rain in the area. The rocks were slick though, and that was a real concern to us, even though Windom was just 1,100 feet up from our safety spot. We sat for awhile, watching the weather, contemplating our next moves. Would we be able to wait out the storm? Would it be safe to go up? We sure did not like the thought up coming up again in the morning on tired legs. We finally agreed that it made the most sense to head down, especially given the fact that it was still slightly raining and the rocks were getting wet and it was still sounding off with thunder. Even on the way down, I stepped on a large wet rock slab that was slightly at an angle and it dropped me on my side like a hit from a middle linebacker. I was fine but it was a good reminder that we had made the right choice to go down. Even still, more and more people kept heading up. Madness.

The views on the way down were still great though, including this wonderful shot of some waterfalls below Twin Lakes.

The weather persisted most of the way down into Chicago Basin.

And in true San Juan Mountain form, the weather started to dissipate as we got lower...

We reached our campsite slightly demoralized, tired, and sore. My knee was starting to really hurt from all of the pounding it had received on the downclimbs, which did not bode well for the climb up and down Windom for the following day. Such is life on a quest for mountain tops. Sarah decided to take a nap and sulk over our defeat, while I decided to eat some food and think about the day's highs and lows and the strategy for the following days. As we were moping, a herd of goats decided to come see what all the whining was about and one of them even decided to piss on our pity parade.

This herd was pretty big - I believe there were 7 of them total, including two babies, a real scruffly looking one, and a bigger grandpa type. 

Here's Mr. Scruffly:

And my favorite goat photo... I was photographing them from near a fallen tree when all the sudden this baby goat decided to jump on the tree and walk towards me - he came all the way down and started nibbling on the tree - it was really cool.

One of them kept a good eye on me. I think he was making sure I was not going to attack them or something. It was funny to watch them interact so closely. Sometimes the babies would go under a female for milk and they would get shoed off. Sometimes one goat would kick another goat out of a grazing spot in a fury. They were hilarious.

I probably got too excited about the goats, but I've been waiting years to see goats up close again, so it was a real treat.

It was really funny how close they got to our campsite! One time, one of them charged another one, and did not see that Sarah was right behind the other goat. When he turned to run, he almost jumped right into Sarah!

They were really fun to photograph.

This little guy was playing king of the hill. I think he ended up losing.

I did some video footage of the goats as well -

After the goats were dispursed from our campsite, we cooked dinner. Our dinner consisted of a glorious mixture of mashed potatoes, country gravy and spam - a tried and true recipe from the annals of the backpacking hall of fame. The alarm was set for 3:30 AM and we crashed hard into the gelatinous wall of sleep that always greets you after a hard day of mountain climbing.

Day 4: Climb of Windom Peak and pack-out - 19 miles, 6,500 ft. elevation gain - 20 hours of hiking...

3:30 AM came all too soon, and I hit snooze twice. So, we did not leave camp until 4:15 AM. The going was slower and we were feeling pain. In fact, I was quickly questioning my physical capability to complete the climb, and we had not even reached Twin Lakes. Halfway up Twin Lakes, I had to stop and take some vitamin-I (Ibuprofen), as the pain my knee was excruciating. The pain quickly faded and we reached the lakes in the darkness of the early morning.

Hiking up to the Windom side of the basin was accomplished in short order, and the stellar light of sunrise kissed the mountains around us.

We reached the saddle between Peak 18 and Windom pretty quickly. On the hike down from Eolus, one of the climbers in the cluster of oddly-equipped people told us that Windom was underestimated. We were not quite sure what the heck he meant by that, considering so far both Eolus and Sunlight were both more difficult. There was a trail 3/4 of the way up Windom. We finally did find out what he meant, since the trail gave way to some very fun scrambling on class 3 rock if you wanted it. Many inappropriate jokes were exchanged between Sarah and I regarding the 'underestimation' of Windom and we were off to the races. We both agreed that had we done this climb while wet, it would have been quite dangerous. The views of Sunlight Spire and Sunlight were great. Loved it. Here you can see sun light just hitting Sunlight Spire with Windom's steep class 3 rock on the right.

We reached the summit block and the views to the east were insane. The sun had been shrouded by some odd clouds, and light beamed forth like needles cutting through a gray sheet in front of car headlights. Unnamed lake at 13,100 ft. to the east was also a real treat - a sheet of glass suspended in heaven.

I reached the summit first and just felt complete and total gratification for our efforts. After the demoralizing defeat the day before, this summit was delicious.

The summit of Windom was curious. It was a series of huge blocks, all seemingly suspended by some unknown force.

It was hard to believe that I had finally made it to Windom's summit. I had first admired this summit back in 2001, when I climbed Jupiter in a cotton t-shirt with my dad. Wow, have I come a long way! Check out that summit shot from 2001!

Due to the absolute absurd (meaning awesome) lighting, the opportunity for HDR photography was endless. I opted to just go for it. Sarah was pleased with this summit as well. It was totally under-rated - great challenge, great route and great views.

Sarah snapped off three bracketed photos of me on Windom's summit block - and the HDR result was WAY over-the-top, but epic looking either way.

At this point I did some pano work and went for the classic 360 HDR pano. I fell in total love with the results. The way the light just penetrates the low clouds just floored me. The details on Sunlight and Sunlight Spire were magnificent. Thank you Tokina 11-16! Check out the larger verison by clicking on it.

Windom provided such a great view of Arrow and Vestal too...

We headed down and enjoyed the views of Eolus all the way down.

Before we knew it, we had already reached the trail junction for Columbine Pass and headed back to camp. We passed an old mine again but this time stopped to take pictures. Another group had mentioned that the mine was actually pretty cool to explore, but that was not high on our list.

We reached camp at about 11:15 AM and packed up. We set our minds to the idea of getting all the way back to the car today. It was a lofty goal, to be sure, but we felt like we could do it, plus for some reason my legs decided that they were no longer sore. So we departed at 12:00 PM, with rain gear at the ready, and minds determined. Hell or high water, we were going to make it to the car. The climb out of the basin to Columbine Pass was gruelling. It was painful and slow. The weight of our packs and the fatigue of the weekend's work had us moving a consistent snails pace. We reached Columbine Pass and looked back - it felt great to get this far already, but we knew that the day had just begun...

A look over the other side of the pass revealed clear weather and an inviting Columbine Lake. Trimble Pass - here we come! I turned on a podcast of Mike and Tom Eat Snacks - which had me in stitches for most of the hike up to Trimble Pass. Sarah was comforted by the idea that she was hiking with a madman.

The journey from Columbine Pass to Trimble Pass was pleasant, albeit slow and methodical.

We reached Trimble Pass at 3:30 PM. We were still tired and sore, and required some time to rest, but we soldiered on.

As we downclimbed from Trimble Pass onto Silver Mesa, I took one final parting shot of Chicago Basin... what a great place!

As we marched across Silver Mesa to the beat of our own music or podcast, we could not help but notice a huge storm brewing to the west. It looked as though it was moving our direction, so we kept eyes on it constantly. It was quite a sight either way.

Silver Mesa had so many inviting campsites that tempted us. We kept going.

Before we knew it, we were at Lake Marie again. Just below Lake Marie we stumbled across a man from Boulder with four llamas. He was looking for Lake Marie. He had been up the trail and did not see it. I showed him where he was on the map. He thanked me. We were puzzled how one can miss a giant lake, but did not question it a whole lot, as we were focused on a mission. A mission of muscle-pounding and soul-crunching. We reached City Reservoir. It was also teasing us with its ample camping potential...

We cruised past City Reservoir and began a maddening climb out of the basin and towards Endlich Mesa. I found an interesting tree trunk to keep my attention off my aching bones.

Darkness came quickly. We reached the beginning of Endlich Mesa around 9:00 PM. It was snowing. We were tired. We were hungry. We were quite certainly in foul moods. Sarah wanted food and so did I. I did not want to make camp though, so we got some light food out and ate. I confirmed our location on GPS. Only a few more miles to go. We finally reached the car at 11:30 PM and collapsed into sleeping bags in the truck. It was the best shitty night of sleep I've ever had.

This trip was the most physically demanding thing I've ever done. I pushed my body to its limits. I lost 6 pounds. I think both Sarah and I conquered some inner demons on this trip. It was, in retrospect, one of the greatest trips of my life.

Thanks for reading! I leave you with a playful creation - the world of Chicago Basin!

Citations:

¹ Rhoda, Summits to Reach, pp 31-32

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Mount Wilson's claim to fame as one of Colorado's most dangerous 14ers is certainly well deserved. As Colorado's 16th highest mountain, Mount Wilson rises to an impressive 14,246 ft. above sea level and the boasts the State's 9th most amount of prominence with 4,024 ft. The monarch of the San Miguel sub-range of the San Juan Mountains, Mount Wilson is a formidable mountain, without question. The history surrounding this mountain is quite intriguing as well. The first ascent of Mount Wilson is somewhat contested, but it is generally agreed that the first group to ascend it was the Hayden Survey on September 13, 1874, which included A.D. Wilson, after which the mountain was named. Additionally, Franklin Rhoda, a member of the team, later wrote in the survey notes about Mount Wilson: "Only one peak of which we had any dread remained to be ascended, and that was Mt. Wilson. From various circumstances, we have reason to believe that this was higher than any station we had yet made, and from its rugged appearance we dreaded its ascent not a little." Rhoda later reported that, "Mt. Wilson was by far the most dangerous climb of the summer."

I personally had hoped to climb Mt. Wilson back in July; however, that climb was cancelled mid-trip due to my climbing partner not feeling capable of the climb, which is totally understandable given the loose and dangerous nature of the San Miguels. With Wilson Peak already in the bag, I really wanted to return to the basin for a shot at Mt. Wilson, El Diente and Gladstone Peak. Here's a view of Mt. Wilson from the Rock of Ages Saddle:

With a little less than a week left before my hike was scheduled, I was still without a partner. I scrambled to locate one on 14ers.com, but did not have much success. I finally did reach a guy named Will, who wanted to set-up a car shuttle, but it still meant that I would be driving out there alone, which was not something I wanted to do given the unreliable nature of my Jeep. I searched further on Facebook and found that one of my Facebook friends, Kara Bauman, was also planning a trip to the Wilsons. I communicated with her and we quickly made plans to join up. Her group was leaving from Denver on Friday afternoon and I could join them if I could get to Denver. I made it work - and before I knew it - I found myself at the Ken Caryl Park and Ride in Denver at 1 PM on Friday 8/12/11. Our group was comprised of Kara Bauman, Alli Kolega, Tom Shaar and me. The group all assembled and loaded our stuff into Tom Shaar's killer SUV and we departed on our 6 hour journey to the Wilsons. On the way over, we all discussed possible options on which order to climb the mountains and where from. We all conceded that the best day for weather was Saturday, so that made the most sense for an attempt on Mt. Wilson, since it was a longer approach. We would see about the traverse to El Diente from there, and then they would do Wilson Peak on Sunday while I would do Gladstone Peak. We also decided to make Silver Pick Basin our headquarters for the weekend since the trailhead had recently re-opened at a new location after several years of closure due to property issues. In total, our climb took us about 10 hours and we covered 12.7 miles and gained 6,775 vertical feet. Our route up Mt. Wilson and the elevation profile can be seen below (click on each for a larger version).

On the way up Silver Pick Basin road, Alli was telling a story about someone she had heard about on 14ers.com that had been threatened with a gun. Before she could finish the story, I spoke up - "that was me!" Indeed - she was referring to my horrendous situation from 2009 where I encountered some quite disrepectful gun-toting young men. I had just finished telling the story about how the young men had a flat tire when Tom stopped me and said, "I think we have a problem - the tire pressure is dropping." It was crazy timing considering I was telling the story about the guys with the flat tire. Sure enough, Tom's tire had a hole in it. Fortunately, he had a Slime Portable Flat Tire Repair Kit, which enabled him to fix the tire quickly so we could at least reach the trailhead. He also had a portable air compressor, which turned out to be quite awesome!

While Tom did all the heavy lifting, Alli and Kara (left and right respectively) were busy updating the world on our woes via Facebook.

Since the basin had just re-opened the week before, we had anticipated that the trailhead would be busy. Indeed the area had quite a few people in it, and subsequently, all of the good campsites were taken. Tom and Alli ended up sleeping in the car, while Kara and I put up our tents in a field nearby. We decided to set our alarms for 3:30 AM for a 4:00 AM start and hit the sack. The next morning, we started up the trail, guided mostly by the numerous signs that were on the trail. We did find ourselves second guessing the trail at one point on the way up, which I will point out later in the report. It was at that point that we met up with a solo hiker, who turned out to be Will from 14ers.com who I had talked to earlier in the week. He decided to join us for the day and we did not regret it - he was a great companion! We wrapped around the long ridge to the west of Silver Pick Basin and entered the basin proper. The road and trail were very nice and well maintained. We also enjoyed the sunrise over Wilson Peak.

The clouds over Wilson Peak were great!

Kara and I stayed near the back of the pack, talking about life, religion and all other important topics that we could think of. I think I was putting her to sleep with my stories...

We finally reached the stone building which is a remnant of the old Silver Pick Mine, and enjoyed the views of Wilson Peak from there.

Wilson Peak had some great clouds above it and made for an interesting subject to experiment with HDR.

The trail winded up the side of the mountain at a very manageable rate and soon we found the stone building well behind us.

I found myself taking the lead up the trail with Will and we were soon joined by two solo hikers who both had a dog, one of which was a Chihuahua that was on its first 14er climb. The Chihuahua passed Kara on the trail, which was a humerous but sore subject for Kara for the remainder of the hike. We later joked that the dog had gotten to her psychologically and that it was haunting her the whole day. How do you let a small dog on its first hike pass you on the trail? Just kidding of course Kara!

Wilson Peak and the Rock of Ages Saddle neared and Will was getting pretty excited!

So excited that he took off and made it up first!

Tom and I kept on trucking...

The sunrise had finally fully illuminated the valley below and made for quite the sight! Will reached the saddle first and was trying to decide on what to do - Wilson Peak was right there, but he knew he couldn't pass up an opportunity to climb Mt. Wilson with some experienced climbers, so he stuck with us. Both Tom and I are very close to completing the 14ers, and would prove good leaders on the class 3 and 4 terrain ahead.

The approach from Silver Pick Basin proved longer than advertised, and before we knew it, we had already hiked 4 miles just to reach the Rock of Ages Saddle at 13,000 ft. The thought of descending down into Navajo Basin to 12,400 ft. and back up Mt. Wilson was not exactly enticing, but we knew it was the best thing to do given the weather forecast for the weekend.

Eventually, both Alli and Kara caught up with us and we stopped to eat some food and take in the views.

The sunrise was lighting up Navajo Basin and the surrounding mountains, including Gladstone Peak (center), Mt. Wilson (right of center) and El Diente (right).

We headed on down into the basin and I stopped to get a few photos of Mt. Wilson from below.

Here you can see a view from the base of Navajo Basin - mouse-over to see our route up Mount Wilson.

We found the most amazing wildflower field at the base of Mt. Wilson, and I stopped to get some photos of it, including this panorama.

We all started up Mt. Wilson eagerly. It felt like it was right there! I stuck behind with Kara, listening to her stories about life. I also wanted to make sure that someone stayed with her since she was not feeling her best on that day.

Before we knew it, we found ourselves looking back at the Rock of Ages saddle and Wilson Peak to its right. The climbing up the initial half of Mt. Wilson was quite easy, nothing more than a simple hike.

At the end of the easy terrain, we all stopped to rest and prepare for the meat of the climb.

Gladstone Peak loomed over us to the left, blocking the sunlight for the first half of the climb. Eventually, the sun did rise above it, and I found myself drawn to the view of the sun and Gladstone repeatedly.

I decided it would also be a good opportunity to test out some sun-framed HDR photography. The lens flares in the below photo initially bothered me, but after processing the image, I feel like they add value.

The climbing got more difficult and we reached the class 3 section. We all put on our helmets and started up the more difficult terrain. I found it to be much easier than advertised and the rock responded quite well to my intuitively-placed hands and feet. The rock was solid where I expected it to be solid, and loose where I expected it to be loose. Eventually we found ourselves at the base of a giant gully leading up, and I stuck behind with Kara to make sure she made it up safely.

The entire route was littered with well-marked cairns that were also adorned with flourescent surveyors tape, making them easy to locate. I know that this is a controversial practice; however, I think everyone in the group found them to be helpful given the terrain we found ourselves in. The views of El Diente and Navajo Lake were quite superb.

Once we reached the top of the gully, we knew we needed to start traversing across Mt. Wilson. The cairns pointed the way and we followed.

From here the terrain continued to increase in difficulty. The rock was looser and less stable in general. We picked our steps carefully. A look back towards Wilson Peak revealed that we were gaining elevation quickly.

We finally reached the top of another loose gully and the route became obvious but less stable. The rock was getting better but the higher we climbed, the greater the consequences of a loose rock breaking free. The rocks were bigger and the terrain was steeper.

Kara was a real champ on this section.

Finally, we reached the ridgeline and could get views to our east. Tom had made it up to the summit by now.

The route was getting more and more challenging and I was loving it. Kara was keeping her own as well and I think she was having fun on the interesting class 3 rock. By now, Tom had made it up and Will was photographing the journey.

Tom topped out just before Will.

Tom contemplates the route on the crazy summit block of Wilson...

And Tom makes it up! As you can see, the terrain at the summit of Mt. Wilson is crazy and exposed. While it was very solid, I found the terrain to be the most exposed out of any section of any mountain I've done to date. The rocks were totally solid, but they looked like they could slab off at any moment. Someday in the future, someone is going to have the whole summit block slip off and it won't be pretty.

I finally reached the summit block and was totally shocked with the difficult nature of it. I had read about it, but that never really does it justice. There were two moves in particular that would end in death if not executed properly.

Alli captured me doing one of them...

Here's the view down from there - very exposed! The rock was no wider than a person at the most.

Once I reached the top, Tom, Will and I celebrated and took photos. The summit shots did not turn out great, but we were somewhat rushed because Tom wanted to get off the mountain and head for Wilson Peak before the weather got bad.

Tom and Will on Mt. Wilson.

Tom, Matt and Will.

I took one look at El Diente and the weather conditions and said - "No thanks." It looked crazy from there. I know that looks are always deceiving, but I had no interest in soloing the traverse over to El Diente that day. Take a look for yourself:

I did get time to shoot off some shots and capture a 360 from the top. Click to see a larger version.

And I played around with an HDR panoramic of Wilson Peak, Sneffels, Wetterhorn, Uncompahgre, Lizard Head and the Ice Lake Basin peaks.

Tom and Will started down before me, and it made for a good dose of perspective on the downclimb.

Will graciously stopped and photographed me coming down off the top. It was wild stuff! It definately had my heart pumping!

Will and I stayed in the back with Kara, while Tom and Alli went ahead.

Then the craziest thing happened. We ran into a group of 4 young men coming up. None of them had helmets. One of them had a backpack and water. 3 of the 4 were wearing tennis shoes and one of them had a brace or cast on his arm, essentially rendering him one-armed. My only response to that was: "Fascinating." Since I don't liken myself as the 14ers police, I just said hello and kept on going. Now, I could be off here, and you might say I'm a bit of a safety freak and that I need to lighten up... I could not help but wonder though - what the hell were they thinking? Water? Helmets? Broken arm? Wow. Mouseover to see what he must have been thinking.

"Dude! Water is for pansies!"

We took our time coming down, probably too long; however, Kara was good company and we wanted to make sure we did it safely. I kept my eyes on the sky and kept contemplating a hike over to start Gladstone; however, I abandoned the idea at the first sight of bad weather. Even though the weather did hold for the rest of the day, I feel like I made the right choice. We reached that awesome field of flowers again and I went crazy with the camera.

Wildflowers and Gladstone Peak.

The flowers made for a nice subject for some depth of field (DoF) work. Maybe someday I'll get a real lens that makes the bokeh look creamier. I found a really neat pond with some odd plants growing in it that were exuding bubbles. They also made for an interesting subject. With the thought of Gladstone out of my mind, I focused in on looking for interesting things to photograph on the way back down. I also wanted to find things with interesting texture and depth of field.

We finally reached the Rock of Ages mine again and the ever-so-popular mining cart that always makes for great photo opportunities.

Will jams out on the mining cart.

My best captain salute for Mt. Wilson.

Kara, riding the cart to victory!

We made up to the saddle again, where Tom and Alli were waiting for us. We all decided to head back down, despite the fact that the weather was holding. I was good with this decision since we had another day yet to climb.

One thing I love about getting out on these hikes and climbs is that it lets me play around with different subjects for photography. In this case, I chose the old mining building and a barbed wire to focus on for a small depth of field. I can't wait for the day when I can get myself a nice 50mm prime lens to really make these kinds of photos pop.

I also looked for things with interesting textures.

And of course the wildflowers were great too.
One cool thing about this area is the large amount of old mining equipment left behind. I felt like they made good subjects for black and white photos. The below left image is one of my favorites. It combines a few concepts that I wanted to demonstrate - lines and depth of field. I hope that you like them!

We finally wrapped back around to the other side of the long ridge that separates the new Rock of Ages trail from the Rock of Ages basin.

The clouds above were pretty neat.

As mentioned at the beginning of the report, we did encounter one area that confused us on the way up because we felt like we were going the wrong way (which we weren't). This rock in the trail led me to think that maybe we should turn-off on a less-worn trail here, but that proved to lead to nowhere. I wanted to point the rock out to anyone else doing this route so that you know to keep on going straight when you find this rock.

Also of interest, I noticed that the fire I saw last month was still happening in the same general area as before, so that led me to think that maybe there were some controlled fires going on in the area.

I took this photo to not only shot off the fire, but to also demonstrate the difference between using a polarizing filter and not. I took the below photo without the filter, and if you mouse-over it, you can see the same photo only with a filter, with all the same settings in camera. The filter really brings out the blues and adds some punch to the clouds. Check it out!

We reached our campsite and cooked dinner. We all decided to get up early the next day to finish our weekend of climbing. I opted to set my alarm for 1 AM because I wanted to reach the Rock of Ages saddle and then the Gladstone-Wilson saddle for star trails and sunrise. When my alarm went off at 1 AM, I got dressed and ready to go. I got out of my tent and looked up - the sky was full of clouds! Nooooo! I set the alarm for 3 AM and when I woke up again, it was raining. Eventually, we all agreed to cancel the Sunday climbs and head back to Denver. Tom's tire was still holding up, so we headed on out. Wetterhorn poked into view on the drive over Dallas Divide.

Sneffels was looking really awesome with the nasty weather in the area.

Shortly before reaching Ridgway, Tom's air pressure went down again and he replaced the hole with another repair kit.

We once again found ourselves waiting for the air pressure to increase, so I took some photos of our group. Alli was in high spirits.

But Kara, our Lisa Loeb lookalike contest winner, was less than happy.

And then, the most amazing thing happened. While the tire was airing up, I noticed a beam of light hitting the mountains to the east.

It was a good sign!

But alas, shortly after Ridgway, the tire failed again and we decided to replace it with the spare. Fortunately, the views of Sneffels and the thought of breakfast kept our spirits high!

We stopped just by County Rd. 4 for the tire swap.

After switching out tires, we headed to Montrose and ate a glorious breakfast at Starvin' Arvins. The drive to Denver was uneventful.

It was a great weekend depsite some of our set-backs. I met some new people who were all really great. I hope to hike with all of them again!

At the time of this report after climbing Mt. Wilson, I am left with five of the ranked fifty-three 14ers: Mount Eolus, Windom Peak, Sunlight Peak, Maroon Peak and Pyramid Peak. I am on-track to finishing the 14ers this year, which is an amazing feeling!

Thanks for reading! Just a reminder - this site costs me time and money to maintain - if you find it useful, please consider supporting the site by remembering to use the affiliate links, especially if you purchase photography related gear from Adorama.

References:

"The San Juan Mountains: A Climbing and Hiking Guide" - Robert F. Rosebrough. 1986. Cordillera Press.

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The adventure of my July 4th weekend for 2011 just wouldn't end on its own. After spending the morning in Telluride sulking about our partial defeat in Navajo Basin, Regina and I decided to drive back to Colorado Springs and lick our wounds. As we drove closer and closer to Blue Mesa Reservoir, I got a wild idea in my brain. Since both Regina and I still had three days off for climbing, I figured that it would be a total shame to waste that time off and gas money on only one climb up Wilson Peak. Even though we opted to not do El Diente and Mount Wilson, I still felt that we had more gas left in the tank, so to speak, so... I suggested to Regina that we head to Lake City and climb Wetterhorn Peak instead of driving home. At first Regina was more focused on a warm shower and a soft pillow, but it did not take long for the idea to set in and Regina enthusiastically agreed. Perhaps my tactic was not fair, since I knew that Wetterhorn Peak was Regina's favorite mountain of all time. Once Regina agreed, my mood increased dramatically and we set-off for Lake City and the Wetterhorn Peak Trailhead.

To make matters even more epic, I convinced Regina that we should start from camp at 2 AM so we could watch the sunrise from the summit. Climbing up the class 3 summit block of Wetterhorn in the dark sounded pretty fun too... We arrived at the trailhead and found a perfect campsite next to Matterhorn Creek. All night long, I had visions of a most epic sunrise over Uncompahgre Peak that looked something like this:

We quickly went over the game plan and Regina explained the route to me. Regina had been up this trail 3 times last year, so she knew all about it. The first time she went, she was pushed off before reaching the summit because of exhaustion. The second time, she was scared off the trail by actual mountain lions (true story), and the third time, she finally succeeded in reaching the top. She has never shut up about Wetterhorn in all of our trips together, so I figured that either she was exaggerating or that Wetterhorn was truly one of the best climbs in Colorado.

Our campsite was pretty awesome, and we were both thankful for our Mountain House meals that we had packed with us for Navajo Basin.

We went to bed, set the alarm for 2 AM, which arrived pretty quickly. I felt totally rested though, so we equipped our packs and opted to not pack up our tent so that we could hopefully reach the summit by sunrise. The trail was really easy to follow in the dark, but I could not help but think about the mountain lions that Regina encountered last year. Would they totally thwart our efforts? I really hoped not, and focused on the task at hand. We finally reached the area where Regina had encoutered the mountain lions last year, and wouldn't you know it, we looked down the hill to catch the gaze of three sets of eyes illuminated by our headlamps. Crap! Fortunately, we were able to realize pretty quickly that they were just deer, so we continued on up past treeline. It was not until we reached the final ridge of Wetterhorn that there as any light whatsoever in any direction, save the star light.

We continued on up Wetterhorn's ridge, enjoying the progressive light show that was starting to erupt to the east.

Just before we reached Wetterhorn's final section, the sun began to get closer and closer to emerging... would we make it to the top before the sunrise? I was getting nervous in anticipation.

I was really having fun with my camera, firing off several bracketed shots for HDR, using rocks as a tripod and the self-timer to prevent camera shake.

We finally reached a small snowfield that was in a small flat area before the top. The snowfield was at the base of the huge cliff walls of Wetterhorn and lead us to a notch that was a portal to the super fun Class 3 section of Wetterhorn.

At last, we reached the final summit pitch and Regina went first. Her enthusiasm for Wetterhorn was impressive and nothing like her lack of enthusiasm two days prior on Wilson Peak.

I was even able to take some video of Regina climbing up this section.

I followed Regina after she had secured herself above, and quickly made it up within a few seconds of fun climbing. We were literally about 20 seconds from the top and I told Regina that the sun would be rising in any second. I crested the summit and it was quite possibly one of the most amazing thing I've ever witnessed. The sun literally crested the horizon THE EXACT MOMENT that I crested the summit. The timing was insane. I ran as fast as I could to the other side, built a rock tripod, and began shooting. I knew that this was gold.

These two are HDR and almost the same except for some slightly different processing techniques.

I was like a little kid on Christmas. I had no words to describe it. I didn't even realize it, but it was pretty cold up there. I think it took me a good 20 minutes to even feel it.

Regina was pretty excited too, being that it was the first time she had seen the sunrise from the top of the mountain.

The views were simply incredible... including this 360 degree panoramic.

The lighting was perfect for High Dynamic Range (HDR). I knew that this would be the best chance I'd get in a long time to put together an HDR pano, so I gave it a shot. The results were mind-blowing. I can't wait to get one printed for my house.

The views of Coxcomb and Redcliff were crazy!

Hey, the summit shelter even makes a good tripod in a pinch! I decided to take a few HDR shots of Sneffels and the rest of the rugged San Juan Mountains to the west.

Uncompahgre Peak was truly an amazing feature to photograph from Wetterhorn.

I had always admired both Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn as a pair, especially last year from Handies Peak (Wetterhorn on the left, Uncompahgre on the right):

Is there really such a thing as too many sunrise photos?

Or panoramics for that matter?

The craggy features of Redcliff to the North were quite impressive as well!

All this photography and I had almost forgotten that Regina was with me, obviously a bit chilled!

So, we decided we had enough amazing views for one morning and then departed the summit.

The downclimb was a little more tricky than the upclimb, but nothing worth worrying too much about. As long as you take your time and stagger your group, it is very safe.

It never fails to amaze me what will grow on the side of a mountain...

Naturally, Uncompahgre kept me in a state of wonder...

As did Sneffels...

Wetterhorn was pretty awesome looking for below, which was awesome since it was completely dark when we headed up.

Also, a set of lower peaks kept my attention to the west, near Ouray. They were so impressive and gnarly looking! I was convinced that it could only be Bighorn Ridge, just east of Ouray. I believe I have confirmed this by looking on the Impressiveness List on my website.

All this photography set me back from Regina quite a ways, and before I knew it, Regina had reached the Golden Saddle.

We finally ran into some early hikers just after the ridge, who turned out to be none other than "Kitten" from 14ers.com.

Regina and I both spotted this awesome little pool below and I knew it would make for an interesting shot...

Funny thing - unknown to me at the time, "Kitten" shot a photo of me taking that photo, as I discovered it in her trip report.

I even got a picture of Regina, and Wetterhorn, plus the pool.

I spotted some interesting flowers off-trail and figured they might make for a cool shot with Uncompahgre behind them...

And, out of nowhere, a plane went zooming by over Wetterhorn...

The hike out was pristine. The views never got old. Wetterhorn and Matterhorn painted such an incredible vista.

Wetterhorn looked pretty awesome from the valley below...

And of course, the weather started to move-in as we were heading out. The clouds were really intense, so I figured it might be fun to take some HDR shots of them.

In case you were wondering, at the first trail junction, seen below... you go right. I barely noticed this one on the way up since Regina has this mountain memorized.

Matterhorn Creek provided some amazing opportunities for photos as well, having a ton of water in it.

What else can be said about Wetterhorn? It is probably the perfect mountain. Here's why:

1. The approach is short and easy, accesible to even the most novice of hikers.
2. The route is solid - it is a terrific introduction to Class 3.
3. The views are INSANE.

The only bad thing about Wetterhorn is that it is not closer to my house! I would rate it a 10/10.

I hope you enjoyed the photos! Please contact me if you would like to purchase any. See this page for more details.

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