5/28/04 – "Little Buff" (UN 12,644), East Buffalo Peak & West Buffalo Peak – Northwest Slopes, Northeast Ridge, Southeast Ridge

9.1 miles, 3780'


We've been having fun this May visiting peaks that had been on our list for a while. We continued the trend with the Buffalo Peaks, the southernmost 13ers in the Mosquito Range. You pass this prominent massif every time you drive through South Park on US-285 on your way to the Sawatch, the Sangre de Cristos, or points west, and the peaks are quite visible from the Arkansas River Valley, as well. The Buffalo Peaks are distinctive because, according to The Roadside Geology of Colorado, they are the remnants of lava flows and volcanic ash that once filled an ancient valley. "The flows, composed of dark fine-grained andesite, are quite resistant, but the soft valley walls that contained them have worn away, so that what used to be a valley is now a mountain." With such interesting origins, these peaks were high on our list.

For the holiday weekend, Erin and I were meeting some friends from New York in Aspen. Not wanting to miss a perfectly good climbing weekend, we took the day off on Friday and set out to climb the Buffalo Peaks before driving over recently reopened Independence Pass to join Anu and Rob. We turned onto the Buffalo Peaks Road, leaving 285 south of Fairplay. Our starting point was around eight miles in. Thanks to some beta from Jon Bradford's SummitPost page, I knew to look for a dirt road heading north once you go over a second small pass along the way. We turned and drove another quarter-mile, where this road ends. A web of roads cut through a gorgeous pine forest north of the Buffalo Peaks, and they offer a convenient albeit confusing way to reach timberline. We started north from our parking spot at 8:30 and followed a somewhat vague trail through aspen, along a small creek. Soon the trail dead-ended at one of the roads. We knew that we should be east of the drainage, so we turned left. Later, we'd find out we could have turned right, all the same. Views of the East and West peaks opened occasionally as we climbed higher, and we checked out small ice formations alongside of the road.

Because of my work on the 12ers list, I had long known that there was a ranked 12er east of the Buffalo Peaks. UN 12,644 provides an attractive balance to the massif when you view it while heading north or south on US-285 in South Park. We took to calling the peak Little Buff, and we knew we wanted to include it during our climb.

I won't attempt to explain the turns we made to navigate the network of roads and reach timberline on the slopes of Little Buff. Inevitably, I would give the wrong directions. The best advice is to either have a good sense of direction, or use some sort of navigational aid. The road I chose led us onto a minor ridge reaching north from Little Buff and then contoured slowly up to timberline on its northwest slopes. From there, we began the 900' climb to the enormous summit plateau.

It grew windy as we scaled easy terrain on the slopes. Once at the top, we found an old register placed by Mike Garratt at the summit cairn. Among the names I recognized in the register were Jim and Kirk Mallory's. The true summit is very close to the edge of Little Buff's steep, 800' north face, which contrasts starkly with everything else about this lump. We hiked to the broad, spacious saddle that connects Little Buff to East Buffalo Peak, stepping past some delightful, small pools and incredible views of Mount Princeton and the southern Sawatch 14ers.

We now faced 1000' of East Buffalo's northeast ridge to continue our circle tour. There is a trail leading through the talus, and it avoids some of the ridge's difficulties on its southeast side before gaining the rounded slopes near the summit. We ate some lunch at the top and gawked at the cliffs on West Buffalo's northeast face. We saw many more familiar names in this peak's register. There were some statistical achievements for us that day. Erin summitted her 100th unique Colorado mountain above 11,000' with Little Buff, and I reached this milestone atop East Buffalo. The winds discouraged a long summit stay, and we soon left for the taller of the Buffalo Peaks.

The ridge connecting the peaks is a fascinating hike. You pass directly above the beautiful cliffs that you've been eyeing all day while marveling at volcanic formations of all shapes and sizes, including plates, books, and small towers. It took another hour to gain our third, equally windy summit of the day. We signed the register (the first to do so this year!), took a look back at East Buffalo, and then began our descent down West Buffalo's northeast slopes.

Lower on the slopes, we managed a decent glissade and reached the trees, ready to begin a miserable bout of postholing to get to the other side of the basin. Waist deep postholing in sugar snow alternated with hard, crusty sections, often catching us off-guard. After battling the conditions for a while, we crossed Lynch Creek and started to climb up the slopes on the east side. After just 50' or so of climbing, we found a dirt road, though it was a different one from the morning. We followed it anyway, content to try to navigate the tangle and get back to our car. Though a GPS may have showed that we turned a circle along the way, we still made it back to the car quickly, and with little difficulty. The road actually dumped us out right next to the small trail we used at the beginning of our hike, for a nearly perfect loop trip. The hike clocked in at 7:20, and we loved every minute. Did I mention that we didn't see a soul all day until we got back to our car? If you're interested in hiking on some volcanic terrain, close to Denver, put the Buffalo Peaks on your list!