Fall in the Elks: Mt. Raoul Trio

Mt. Raoul (aka “Castleabra”) seen from the Conundrum Creek trail, September 24th. Click photos to enlarge.

On Tuesday I headed over to Aspen intent on finishing off the group of nine 13ers accessible from the Conundrum Creek drainage west of Ashcroft. Last July I hit six of them, running the ridge from Hunter Peak out to Triangle Pass, but left the last three summits including 13,803-foot Mt. Raoul for another day. Down to only two Bicentennial peaks left to finish the Top 200 in the state (Raoul and Organ Mountain in the La Garitas), and armed with a perfect fall weather forecast, it was time to head back up Conundrum and knock off the rest of those peaks.

According to the foliage, it’s officially fall in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness.

Conundrum Creek is a long drainage – about 10 miles from the TH to Triangle Pass – so any single-day outing to climb peaks in the area is going to entail a big day. The good news is it’s easy to cover a lot of ground thanks to the excellent trail that runs from one end to the other. I still found this to be true even despite the changes made to the trail after all the avalanche destruction throughout the valley in March.

With a 7am start I really tried to burn it up the trail. I passed the hot springs and continued on up Mt. Raoul’s loose west face route described in Roach’s book. It wasn’t the most pleasant terrain or ascent by any means, but one foot in front of the other eventually got me there and I topped out on Raoul in ~4 hours from the TH.

Summit of Mt. Raoul and Bicentennial summit 199.

Looking west towards Pyramid and the Bells.

Next it was off to Pt. 13,550, an unnamed peak to the south connected to Raoul via a typical loose, crumbly Elk ridge line.

Looking south from Mt. Raoul to the next objective of the day – Pt. 13,550. I dropped down into Cumberland Basin and traversed below all the BS, then ascended the face with the white patch of snow on it.

I always love late-September weather windows. Although the days are shorter you literally have all day, and things tend to stay nice and cool allowing for efficient travel. This was one of those days.

Descent route off Pt. 13,550. Looks a lot steeper than it really is.

Up and over 13,550 I continued on to the third and final peak of the day, Pt. 13,162. Getting to this one required a few minor scrambling moves and dropping off the ridge proper once or twice, but in general I found it pretty easy to connect the two.

Mt. Raoul (left) and Pt. 13,550 from the summit of Pt. 13,162. That’s Castle Peak in the way back.

I was happy to find a nice scree field to descend back into upper-Conundrum Basin from the saddle between 550 and 162. After traversing across the basin back to the trail to avoid all the willows lower down, it was smooth sailing back to the hot springs where a pit stop was surely in order.

The best part of any outing in this drainage – the hot spring. For the second year in a row it was essentially empty when I got there. Nice to see the permit system seems to be working to keep the numbers down.

After a 30-minute soak it was time to keep moving. I was able to make quick work of the remaining 9 miles back to the car, with moose and bear sightings along the way and the trees lighting up a nice amber hue under the slowly setting sun. I capped off the day by running the last couple miles, getting back to the TH well before dusk which was my secondary goal for the day besides hitting the peaks, of course. Stats came out to 25.25 miles and 7,065 ft in just under 11 hours.

Trailhead destruction. They did a nice job of routing the new trail straight through it.

With any luck I’ll be heading down to the La Garitas soon to finish off the Bi’s on Organ. So fingers crossed for a couple more weather windows before the snow flies, but I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m excited for ski season just around the corner.

Back at the Conundrum Creek TH. Cheers to fall!

Thanks for reading…