Six Peaks, 22 Goats and a Zillion Wildflowers:
A Backpacking and Climbing Trip in the Needles and Grenadiers
8/1-9/98
Author:
Gina Pasquale
Participants:
Steve Doorn and Gina Pasquale
Anyone who has spent any time in Colorado naturally knows that the San
Juans are the best place in the state, and of course the best part of the
San Juans are the Needle and Grenadier ranges. Gina and I spent the first
week of August climbing and backpacking through this area of spectacular
pointy peaks. Our backpack took us from Ruby Creek through Noname and Ten
Mile Creek drainages over to Vestal Creek, setting us up to climb Turret,
the 3 Trinities, Wham Ridge on Vestal, and Arrow Peaks.
We started out in Durango on the D&SNG and got off the train at Needleton
along with the hoards bound for Chicago Basin. We soon left the mob behind
as we went off in search of the Ruby Creek trail. This is a somewhat
difficult trail to find so I'll give a fairly detailed description here of
how to get on it: Once across the bridge over the Animas take an immediate
left and hike north along the river on a fairly well worn trail. Keep an
eye out for an old rusty mining cart and Pigeon Creek (I don't remember
which comes first). A little past these (about a quarter mile) you will
come to a meadow with aspens. On the right edge of the meadow (east) you
will see the slopes rising up out of the flood plain. As you walk through
the meadow keep a close eye out for a trail heading up these slopes--better
yet walk directly along the slopes to find the trail (if you get to the end
of the meadow, you've gone too far). Following this trail will lead you to
another small clearing. Keep to the right edge of this clearing and look
closely for a trail that leads out of the clearing to the right--once on
this it will eventually lead you on a steep north east traverse over a high
ridge and into the Ruby Creek drainage. Believe me, it is worth taking the
time to find the trail. Well, we started up the trail in a light rain
(which stopped about 2 hours later) and made it to the drainage and headed
upstream to Ruby Lake--a beautiful emerald (of course) colored lake which
spills into a smaller lake to the west. At this point the trail pretty
much disappeared so we headed further upstream on the south side of the
lake until we found a convenient place to cross the stream, followed by
picking our way up steep slopes to pass the pretty cascades and falls
tumbling down the creek. Once on the bench above the cascades we were
treated to fantastic views of the NE face of Pigeon, the Turret Needles,
and the east side cliffs of Monitor, Animas Mt. , and The Index. After an
exhausting ordeal of crashing through chest and head-high willows (the
willows almost won this round) we made it to our first camp in the meadows
at 11,600' at the base of Pigeon, Turret, and the Turret Needles on the
edge of a carpet of wildflowers.
The next day we got up at sunrise (we don't always get an alpine start) and
headed up Turret Pk (13,835', #98 on the way to Gina's top 100) by way of
the saddle between it and Pigeon. The route up is dominated by views of
the towering NE face of Pigeon and went through countless patches of
amazing flowers. Just name a color of Indian Paintbrush and you can find
it in the Needles. After scrambling up grass and talus (with an occasional
3rd class move near the top) we summited early with plenty of time and blue
sky to hang out under on the summit. Pointy peaks to view everywhere we
looked. After a leisurely return to camp we discovered a marmot had chewed
through one side of our tent and out the other--they're soooo cute. Later
we were graced by the presence of a herd of 22 rocky mountain goats (with
around 7 babies) that entertained us with their antics until sundown. The
following morning they returned and we found it hard to leave them as we
broke camp to head over the pass to Noname Creek.
|
One note to people
coming to this area and to Chicago Basin: An effort should be made to
urinate in the rocks in these areas to discourage the goats from tearing up
the fragile meadows to get at your urine for salt. |
We headed into the Noname Creek drainage over the 12,700' pass that leads
directly under the striking east face of Monitor Peak. On heading down
towards Noname, we passed through another fantastic wildflower meadow--the
best I've ever seen in Colorado. Again, we were traveling completely off
trail in places few ever go--a wonderful feeling. Once down to Noname we
had great views of the Knifepoint and Jagged Peak. After following the
climber's trail to Jagged up to 12,000' we cut north to go over one final
12,900' pass for the day that would lead us to Balsam lake at the head of
Ten Mile Creek. Before the pass we walked by a beautiful deep blue lake at
12,500' that we would love to return to. Once over the pass we traversed
towards Peak Six and then steeply down grass and talus to a difficult to
find trail that curled west to Balsam lake. This was easily the longest
and hardest day of our trip, but we ended up on the shores of a beautiful
and isolated lake beneath the rugged, toothy peaks of the Grenadier Range.
After the trip we learned of a fun 5.6 traverse along cliffs that plunge
into the NE side of the lake--we'll try it out when we return. The
following morning we had a very relaxed start (10 AM) on our way to Vestal
Creek. We picked our way north from the lake up grassy avalanche slopes to
another 12,900' pass between Vestal and the west Trinity. After hanging
out at the pass for a while we descended into the promised land of fun
climbing on the quartzite peaks of the Grenadiers.
Vestal creek, unfortunately, is becoming popular and we saw three groups
camped here after seeing no one the rest of the trip, but it's a big
drainage with plenty of elbow room. We walked downstream to a point right
between Vestal and Arrow Peaks and set up camp on a rocky bench with
incredible views of Wham Ridge and the ramps leading up Arrow (and a den of
about 10 annoyingly cute marmots below us). We finally got into our alpine
start mode the following morning and headed back to the saddle between
Vestal and W. Trinity to do the Trinity traverse. This is a complete
traverse of West, Middle and East Trinity Peaks, and was for me the best
climb of the trip. We started up the west ridge of the W. Trinity
(13,765') and summited at 7:30 AM (while low misty clouds were blowing
through the valleys and periodically hiding nearby peaks). The route we
took had plenty of fun 3rd class scrambling on solid quartzite with a fair
amount of 4th and even low 5th class climbing thrown in. By careful
routefinding, it's probably possible to keep this section to 3rd to easy
4th class. The downclimb to the saddle for the middle Trinity (13,805')
was straightforward and leads to a cairn trail that is important to find
for the traverse to the middle peak. Keeping an eye out for cairns will
lead you across and up on the connecting ridge just below its crest (more
adventurous parties will try to stay on the easily 5th class knife edge
ridgecrest). For us, the cairn trail kept floating in and out of the fog.
At one point the cairns will stop at a 1-2 foot wide ledge that leads into
dubious looking territory. At this point look carefully for a cairn with
an elongated rock pointing up. This is your sign to scramble up (about
30') a 4th-low 5th class chimney. The chimney was a blast, and above it
route finding to the summit is relatively straightforward. We summited at
9AM. The down climb from the middle Trinity is down a loose, shallow gully
that leads to the west couloir on the East Trinity. We had to kick steps
across steep snow to access this couloir. The ascent of the east Trinity
(13,745') was the funnest part of the traverse and can follow solid
quartzite up either side of the couloir (the central part is filled with
loose rubble). I chose the right side which was composed of continuous 3rd
and 4th class moves over perfect quartzite blocks. At the top of the
couloir, as near as we could tell, you definitely want to finish on the
right side. At this point an airy traverse on a narrow ledge needs to be
made to access the summit ridge to the left. By the time we reached the
summit (11:00 AM) the low clouds had moved on to give us great views of the
San Juans and the thunderheads that were just building. The final descent
brought us to the saddle between the Vestal and Trinity creek basins.
While sitting there eating lunch, 2 guys caught up to us after also doing
the traverse--they were psycho mountain runners who had started from Molas
pass at 6 that morning. (More proof that I'm just a lite-weight climber.)
They also happened to be the same two people we had met on Jagged Mt. two
years earlier! We found the traverse to be a very challenging route
finding exercise with loads of fun scrambling. We highly recommend it to
experienced climbers.
The next morning we again rose bright and early to climb Wham Ridge--the
north buttress/face of Vestal Peak (13,864'). Wham Ridge is an amazing
feature that swoops out of the valley floor, continually narrowing and
steepening until it reaches the summit. The lower half of the face is
smooth unbroken quartzite, while the upper, steeper half, is much more
broken up--even containing one pitch of 3rd class scrambling. Many people
will solo the whole feature, but after scrambling up the lower third, we
decided to rope up, starting near the right side and following about 2 and
a half pitches of crack systems. After 3 more pitches of broken up
climbing, we cut left into the third class area high on the mountain near
the center. This was followed by about 3 more pitches of climbing up lower
5th class cracks and dihedrals to the false summit. We unroped there and
scrambled over to the true summit for a leisurely lunch before the nasty
downclimb off the south side gullies. If you're going to climb Vestal,
Wham Ridge is the route to take. Pretty much any route you pick will go.
The start of ours was fun, but the remainder might have been better if we
had angled left earlier (sometimes you have to work pretty hard to find the
fun 5th class stuff). A better route might be to start directly in the
middle of the face and just head straight up. Still, it was a fun climb on
a very impressive feature.
Our final climbing objective was Arrow Peak (13,803'). We had originally
planned on climbing its north ridge (a six pitch 5.6 route followed by
endless 3rd and 4th class scrambling) but decided we wanted an easier day
for our last climb. So we instead went for the northeast rib route, which
follows a beautiful continuous ramp to within a couple hundred feet of the
summit. This morning we waited to start until the sky just started to
brighten and reached the base of the climb at sunrise--just in time to see
a huge golden eagle go soaring overhead, striking fear into the hearts of
our marmot colony. We headed up, frictioning on fantastic continuous slabs
of quartzite to the base of a large snowpatch. At this point we switched
into a smaller and more broken up ramp to the right. We followed this to
within 400 feet of the summit and traversed left into a low 5th class
chimney (pretty exciting!) that brought us onto the northeast face. We
picked our way through more low 5th and 4th class rock (all solid and fun)
until we reached the summit (me by way of the face and Gina via the NE
ridge directly). This was another fun scramble on solid rock with a fair
amount of interesting route finding thrown in. For Gina, this was the
funnest climb of the trip. After a couple of hours of taking in the summit
views we headed down via an easier 3rd class variation that brought us to a
narrow ridge running between the upper and lower ramps. We followed this
to the point where we caught the chimney earlier and then reversed our
route up. We spent the rest of the afternoon being generally lazy on the
shores of Vestal Lake at the base of Wham Ridge.
The following day (our 8th in the backcountry) we hiked out Vestal Creek to
the beaver ponds above Elk Creek. We took an extended break here, taking
in one last view of Vestal, Arrow and Electric Peaks and then headed down
to Elk Park to catch the train back to Durango. 5 minutes after getting on
the train it began to pour outside again--the first time in a week. Once
again we got lucky with the weather and thoroughly enjoyed our extended
wanderings in the best of Colorado's wilderness.
