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Finally working on county highpoints and centennials again, I drove down Friday night to Creede and parked at the 2wd trailhead to wake up at 5:00 a.m. to meet up with Layne Bracy. I thought maybe we could save some time driving up the 4wd road, but I goofed up on which road to take and we gave up that plan early. It probably wouldn't have saved us much time as the creeks to ford were high for my stock tire 4-Runner. The next mistake took more time to manifest itself, although I was aware we had gone well north past the Stock Driveway. I mentioned we could take an alternate route I had waypointed on my GPS instead further north. The road did not have a turn-around near the driveway like the highpoints book states. There was a small trail leading to a waterfall which looked about as reasonable to acquire the slopes with as any other route. There was a bit of a surprise at the end, where a chute leads north out of the drainage. The loose character of the rock here was distinctive and made for a sketchy exit onto the slopes above. On the right Layne ponders how much longer the rock face will stay intact.
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Here is a look a our detour.
The route was smooth sailing after the initial problems, ascending slowly up the relatively treeless drainage and occasional talus. It was quite obvious at this point that we were far from the intended route. The temperature was nice, and I wasn't working up a sweat like usual for this time of year. We studied the terrain to determine the best strategy to attain the ridge. On the left, we arrive above treeline at 12,000' on the east slopes directly below the summit. We opted to take the ridge north of the drainage directly east of unranked 13,628'. It looked a lot less steep to me than it ended up being, but was an expedient way to gain the required elevation to get on the north ridge. We kept a steady pace to about 13,300', where we stopped to refuel and rest for a short period. The talus was pretty stable albeit steep up this slope, and rather monotonous.
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We trended southeast toward the saddle of 13,628' and 13,895', then slowly gained the summit ridge (photo on right). We summited an early 9:30 a.m. and stood on top of the summit cairn, defying the 13,900' invisible contour. The north La Garita peaks were easy to pick out from the summit, truly a small range. We opted for the correct descent route, admiring a large elk herd and the odd conglomerate ridge features. There is a lot of variability in the quality of the path back to the 4wd road. We parted ways at 12:30, Layne having finished all four south San Juan highpoints in a day and a half. Next on my agenda was Bennett Peak before heading home.
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