2/20/05 – Waugh Mountain – North Slopes

8.0 miles, 2545 feet


Kirk Mallory, Teresa Gergen, John Kirk, and I met up at the Conifer Safeway last Sunday to make an attempt on Waugh Mountain, an 11er in the South Park Hills that caught our attention because it holds the 55th position on the list of Colorado's most prominent peaks. This would be my first hike for which prominence was the sole motivating factor. Teresa remarked that she had no real reason to hike this peak – it wasn't on any of the lists she is keeping track of! She was a sport to tag along and help us break trail. Erin couldn't join us for the trip because her back went out. She's working hard at recuperating, and I'm hoping she'll be back in action this weekend.

While my three climbing partners were waiting for me to arrive, they bumped into Jennifer Roach, who was leading a CMC excursion up Meridian Hill. When Kirk told her our plans for the day, she had to ask where Waugh was – that's how obscure this mountain apparently is! There was a certain exigency for us to bag this peak when we did. Much of the peak is privately owned, but its summit and an approach from the north are located on the State Land Board Trust's Waugh Mountain parcel. Colorado county highpointers may be familiar with the Land Board because of Sedgwick County's highpoint in the northeastern corner of the state. In Sedgwick's case, the land is leased to a private interest year-round, and to enter that property without permission is trespassing, just as if you were on private land. Waugh Mountain, on the other hand, is only leased for part of the year: March 1 through August 31. During other times, the land is open to public access. With the deadline approaching at the end of this month, we decided to take a stab at Waugh before access closed off until fall.

The drive felt long, probably because I've only been climbing in the Front Range lately. Teresa was thinking about climbing Shavano and Tabeguache the next day, so she drove down separately and left Kirk, John, and I to our mountain geeking. John pointed out the massive Thirtyninemile Mountain and dramatic Black Mountain as we drew closer to our turnoff from SH-9. While Kirk and John had made trips to explore the area's access situation, I had never been to this particular part of Colorado before, and I was happy to see the South Park Hills for myself. I've read these peaks are volcanic in origin, and may have been responsible for the flows that created the Florissant Fossil Beds near Pikes Peak. The last part of our drive was nearly 20 miles on a dirt road that ultimately connects SH-9 to Salida, over 50 miles away.

We were expecting an easy day. We had plotted a few routes that all took advantage of the various roads that cut up the mountain's expansive slopes, but we ultimately decided on the shortest route, mileage-wise. We put on our snowshoes at the car, and we wouldn't take them off until we got back, over eight hours later. Initially, we tried to follow our road that we hoped would help us gain Waugh's upper heights. The road was often difficult to keep track of amidst the 8 inches of crunchy, road-obscuring snow, however, so we ended up using our map to guide us up to the correct drainage, surprisingly still lined by the narrow row of aspen that the quad indicated. Crossing these open flats was about 1.5 miles and 800' of the 4 miles and 2500' our route called for. The remainder of the snowshoe to the summit would be much more strenuous.

We entered the forest, and immediately we were mired in the deep snow of these north-facing slopes. The trailbreaking was so taxing that we began to rotate the lead position every 5 or 6 minutes. We intersected our road quickly, as expected, and we used it for about a quarter-mile to its first switchback. The drifted snow on the road was deep and toilsome, and we all agreed, now that the road had taken us directly to our planned ascent ridge, to bushwhack straight upslope. Near the end of the 900' climb to the Waugh's flat top, we encountered a steep, treeless section that gave us views out to the Sawatch Range and north across South Park. From here we couldn't see the Arkansas River valley that separates the two, so the southern Sawatch 14ers appeared to rise directly from the low, southern Mosquito Range foothills that lie east of Salida. A very interesting perspective. The snow was annoying to some of us, but for John it was downright brutal. John and I are about the same weight, but I think my larger Tubbs snowshoes were providing more flotation than his Atlas shoes, and John grew weak from trailbreaking even when he was in the rear position. We gave John a few cycles to rest while we tried harder to compact the snow when in the lead position.

The snow's condition didn't improve much once we reached the flatter final segment of our day, frustrating because while the summit was only 650' above us, we knew that 1.5 miles of bushwhacking and trench-digging remained between us. I think Waugh was feeling meanspirited that day. We came to realize that Waugh Mountain is probably named because of the noise its winter hikers make while ascending its north-facing slopes. The snow would only rarely support us, and during the push for the summit, the bushwhacking got a lot more intense. Lastly, light snow began to fall, obscuring our summit views once we reached our goal, 5.5 hours after we started. A little-used Mike Garratt register placed in 1992 awaited us at the top. No one had signed this obscure notepad since September. We turned tail rather quickly, and with our trench abetting us, started the gliding descent, which all told took us less than two hours. We left the forest, and with the daylight waning, the colors highlighting Black Mountain were beautiful and serene. Views northeast to Pikes Peak were equally impressive during our finish across the flats.

Here we were, leaving Waugh many hours after we had planned. I gave Teresa some company for the drive home. She was driving back to Denver because she decided she wasn't going to fair well without a trailbreaking partner on Shav and Tab. She regaled me with a number of entertaining tales from her mountaineering career, like when she came to the rescue of a lost hiker on Hassell Peak. I'm really looking forward to my trip to Tucson late next month with Erin, Kirk, Teresa, and Kurt Traskos. We're going to make an attempt on spectacular Baboquivari Peak, and some of us will go on to try the hike up Mount Wrightson. It'll be a great respite from the early Colorado spring.