Gold Dust to “Pika”

On the traverse from Gold Dust to “Pika Peak” in the Holy Cross Wilderness. Click all photos to enlarge.

A few weekends back Rick and I headed into the Holy Cross Wilderness to tag a pair of 13ers on its northwestern edge – Gold Dust and “Pika Peak”. It turned out to be a fun day, with a neat traverse between the two peaks and a stop off at Lake Charles for a dip before heading into Eagle for some cold ones.

We started out from the Fulford Cave Campground and followed the trail southeast up into the East Brush Creek drainage. After putting in several miles and maybe 1,500 ft of elevation gain we split off from the trail and headed east into Negro Basin. Lots of big blocky boulders and rock outcroppings guard the upper-basin, but after winding our way around for awhile we eventually broke tree line and had both peaks and the traverse in our sights.

Working our way up the west face of Gold Dust Peak, with Fools Peak and the East Brush Creek drainage in back.

On top of Gold Dust we ate lunch and admired “Finnegan Peak” and New York Mountain to the north, two peaks we hope to connect up sometime later this summer. We were also happy to have dodged the wildfire smoke coming from Basalt, as a southern breeze seemed to be taking most of it north up the Roaring Fork as opposed to out east over the HCW.

Gold Dust Peak (13,382 ft) summit, looking north. That’s New York Mountain (left), Finnegan Peak (right) and New York Lake. Sweet view.

From Gold Dust we completed the traverse to “Pika Peak”, which was a little bit interesting as we had heard was the case from other parties. An initial knife ridge quickly widened out and turned to the south, where we had easy hiking down to the low point between the peaks. From there, we skirted east around one tower and west around another (both requiring some class 3 scrambling) before heading straight up broken ledges for a few hundred feet to the summit of Pika at 13,126 ft. The traverse took us about an hour and a half.

Fun scrambling near Pika’s summit. The rock through here was more solid than it looks.

After hanging out for a bit on Pika we made our way down its broad west ridge to the shore of Lake Charles. The route was loose up top, but it worked out nicely in the end. At the lake, the weather and water were so nice it was impossible not to jump in (or in Rick’s case, wade in).

Looking back at Gold Dust from Pika’s summit.

The upper East Brush Creek cirque seen on descent. That’s Mystic Island Lake at the far end, which Anna-Lisa and I visited the following weekend with our friend Sarah.

After drying off we made our way back down the trail to the car, just beating the oncoming rain to the parking lot by about 2 minutes. I love when the timing works out perfectly like that.

Here comes the rain. Beer time.

We finished off the day at 7 Hermits Brewing in Eagle, which has a few different IPA options and serves excellent pizza. Although it is a tad on the expensive side.

Rick, thanks for a fun day up there!