8/7/05 – Gilpin Peak – Northwest Ridge

4.5 miles, 2320'


Erin and I were hoping to leave early afternoon on Saturday for our 10-day wedding trip to Ouray. We were so late that we were able to invite over my parents and sister, who had just arrived at the airport in Denver, while Erin and I continued our packing. We hadn't been planning on meeting up with them until Sunday in Ouray, so it was nice to see them early if only briefly. We split ways so that they'd make it to Caņon City that night at a reasonable hour. When Erin and I finally departed after eating dinner, we knew we would be cutting it close if we were going make our 4:00 a.m. meet time with Kurt and Dwight at the Mill Creek Trailhead for Dallas Peak. Kurt was already down in Telluride because he and Kirk Mallory were meeting up to try for Lizard Head, while Dwight was to try to climb something else in the area.

Erin got us to Telluride without much time to spare, and she drove us up the steep Mill Creek road to the trailhead. An empty trailhead? What's this? We had assumed Kurt and Dwight would be camping here, but when we didn't see Kurt's vehicle, we thought they must have camped elsewhere and were running late. Erin and I got changed and put our gear together, but there was still no sign of Kurt or Dwight. We tried to call them on our cell phone, but we weren't getting reception at the trailhead. Nothing left to do but recline our seats and catch some much-needed Z's. Once we hit 90 minutes past our meet time, it was time to make a decision. Neither Erin nor I were ready to try Dallas unroped as a twosome. That challenging centennial 13er would have to wait for another day. So I brought out the maps to come up with Plan B. I know disturbingly little about the peaks accessed from Telluride, so we elected to drive all the way back around the Sneffels Range to Ouray and into Yankee Boy Basin. Before we left Telluride, we tried calling Kurt and Dwight again, but all we got was voicemail.

With the extra driving time, I needed to pick something short and sweet. Potosi Peak was a consideration, but when we arrived in Yankee Boy, that peak and Teakettle Mountain were socked in and ominous looking. Gilpin Peak sounded like it had easy routefinding, and we recalled thinking Gilpin was beautiful from our climb of Sneffels years back. It was settled! We parked off the Yankee Boy road at the large parking lot with the outhouse at 11,400' and started our hike under Stony Mountain's steep, beautiful north slopes at 8:00.

The wildflowers were amazing! We had never seen Yankee Boy in its full kaleidoscopic glory, so we were overwhelmed! Pink Indian paintbrush were prolific, as were bluebells, yellow sunflowers, and probably a half-dozen other kind of flowers. They simply carpeted the ground! We hiked the Yankee Boy road to the Wrights Lake Spur Trail, which quickly brought us to the lake under Gilpin's dramatic northeast face. From here, we identified a trail rounding the lake on its south side, and thought this must be it. The trail quickly faded, however, and we were left to cross an undulating talus field instead of using the much easier Blue Lakes Trail. We lost some time here, but otherwise it wasn't bad. Plus, we were in a good position to begin the ascent up scree slopes to the lowest point on the Sneffels/Gilpin ridge, which is south of Blue Lakes Pass.

We were close to 13,000' and Gilpin was looking more beautiful than ever! We thought The Block Tops, the rugged subpeaks west of Gilpin were awesome, too, and one of them resembled a teapot. I guess Teakettle Mountain isn't the only place to view a culinary silhouette around here! Our route was clear, so we started the climb up Gilpin's north ridge. At first we stayed on the ridge crest, but soon it became festooned with spires and walls. We avoided these difficulties on the left, but we tried not to stray too far from the crest because the further away we were, the looser the scree. Higher up the ridge, the spires and walls to the right shot skyward, and we entered what would be best characterized by as a wide-mouthed gully. Still, the closer we remained to the cliffs on the right the better, and we made quick progress up to the small saddle atop the north ridge.

The north ridge has a summit of sorts. It had looked like a spire all day, but now that we were up here we could see that there's a level catwalk that leads out to its summit: the perfect spot for a hero shot with Sneffels as the backdrop! From here there was a stupendous view of Dallas, and I couldn't help wondering what our day would have been like had it gone as planned. It certainly looked nice over there, and with a 4:00 a.m. start, we'd probably have summitted by now. What the heck happened to Kurt and Dwight? This certainly wasn't like them.

Time to move on! We were already through the toughest section of the route. Now we had just a simple quarter-mile on Gilpin's northwest ridge to reach the top. We had to go up and over Gilpin's northwest subpeak along the way, but this was an insignificant false summit. The drop down the northwest face is really steep, so it was fun to stay near the crest as we traversed to Gilpin's summit where we arrived at 10:15. The view of Sneffels from the summit is ridiculous! This has to be one of the best angles you can get of that majestic 14er from on high. I couldn't help but gawk at the rather spectacular face that Gilpin's northwest summit presents from here. Meanwhile, Erin was engrossed with Mount Emma; she said it looked like a layered wedding cake! We saw Emma again from Telluride the next day, and between those two sightings we were hooked. We came back on Tuesday to climb Emma.

The weather was great on the summit, but the unsettled clouds persisted in Teakettle's direction. Consequently, we didn't stay too long on the summit just in case. Besides we wanted to be back in town when my family arrived. We're definitely not scree-masters, so we took care during the descent. Once we dropped down into the basin, we were sure to contour over to the Blue Lakes Trail, which offered the quickest way back and also fabulous views of Gilpin's northeast face. When looking back through our old Sneffels pictures a few months later, I noticed that Erin took a shot almost identical to this one of Gilpin in 2001. We proceeded back toward Wrights Lake, but first we picked up a buddy – a weasel of sorts that kept on running alongside us. He was very curious, popping up amidst the flowers to check us out.

Back on the Yankee Boy road, Gilpin kept on giving. We had nice views of its southeast face the rest of the way down. Even when some clouds had built up above the peak, the sun continued to shine on Gilpin, providing an interesting look. I've said it already, but the wildflowers were simply outrageous down here, the perfect backdrop for the gorgeous peaks surrounding us! Erin and I were really excited about our plans to drive up here later this week so some of our wedding attendees could see the flowers. Little did we know that Ouray would be pounded by some of the most intense rains the area had seen in 20 years that week. The rains washed out US-550 one night and knocked the delicate petals off most of the flowers Erin and I saw before we could get our family and friends up there. Everyone was still impressed on Friday, but Erin and I were disappointed we couldn't have shared the splendor Erin and I witnessed just a few days before. But that's what these pictures are for, right?

Erin and I returned to Ouray and checked in at the Box Canyon Lodge, where we enjoyed a dip in their hot springs and took a nice nap before my parents, sister, and aunts arrived for dinner at Buen Tiempo. We tried calling Kurt some more, but we were still only getting his voicemail. We just hoped they were okay.

We heard from Kurt on Tuesday. As he explained, they had terrible weather for Lizard Head on Saturday, so much so that they couldn't even give it a shot. When they got to some Internet access, they saw that Sunday's forecast looked similar to Saturday's, so they decided to give up on the San Juans entirely. Kurt said he was assuming that Erin had to give up her cell phone when she left her job at the end of July, so he thought they had no way to contact us when they decided to try a climb in the Elks instead. They got rained out in the Elks that day, so they'd have had a much better time if they had just stayed with the plan to climb Dallas with us! :-)