Beartown 2020: Gaper Sloggin’ for Miles and Miles….

The Nuche.

Peaks Climbed: 

1. Canby Mountain (13,478)
2. Unnamed 13,110
3. Mount Nebo (13,205)
4. Unnamed 13,230
5. Hunchback Mountain (13,136)
6. Peak One (13,589)
7. White Dome (13,621)
8. Sheep Mountain (13,292)
   

Campsite: Beartown

“I can gaper slog for miles and miles and miles and miles. Oh yeah!” 

Keeping the tradition of an annual summer trip down in the San Juan’s going, sights were set on another Beartown slog fest. This was initially supposed to be in Glacier NP, but with COVID putting a nice damper on everything, not to mention the local Blackfoot indian tribe completely closed off access to the entire Eastern side of the park, the decision for a plan B was pretty obvious and easy. With the train down for the summer and San Juan County coming to its senses to allow outsiders in to their 99.9999% tourist dependent economy, we figured another car camping extravaganza was prudent. Beartown it was. The usual assclowns were involved : me, Ben, Steve and Kyle, as well as the addition of 2 more gapers – my cousins Kevin and Matt.

Another tradition we’ve kept alive is seeing how many vehicles we can drive down separately. Last year was 3 for 4 people. This year was 4 with 6 people. One thing I’ve kind of just realized over the years is how quickly vehicles can fill up with people and gear on car camping extravaganzas. My cousin Matt used his 4Runner and we filled it to the brim with all our crap. Ben, Steve and Kyle all used their own vehicles, as well as slept in them, except for Steve, who forgot his tent, so he bunked with me and then ripped ass all night.

Funny thing of note. Matt is a 36 year native of Colorado. He told me he and his fiance had planned an impromptu trip to Telluride, I assumed the weekend before. He had no idea that Telluride was in the San Juans, so not wanting to drive down there 2 weekends in a row, he booked a cheap flight to Montrose Regional. Week of I reach out to everyone just to touch base – Matt was still in Telluride. I get a text Thursday afternoon from the Dunton Hot Springs, apparently he was still down there. Friday he drives back, hands off his 4Runner to Kevin, jerry riggs a bag full of crap, and hops on a plane the next morning as Kevin and I drive his car to Montrose to pick him up. I’m assuming he knows now where the San Juans are.

The road to Stony Pass hasn’t gotten any worse or better since last year. The 4Runner made quick work, as did Ben’s Rav4 and Steve’s 1999 Rav4 (The Honey Badger). I can’t believe that thing is still running. Steve ran over a massive boulder on last year’s trip that I was sure punctured or destroyed something important on the undercarriage, but apparently not. We parked at the pass and hiked up Canby Mountain as a leg stretcher.

Heading up Canby.

It was the perfect way to work out the cobwebs after the long drive and we seamlessly ran in to Ben, Steve and Kyle on our way down. We figured we’d drive up and down Beartown and see what we could see. A few of us were eyeing that perch immediately at the intersection of FS 520 and 506 on the knoll there peering straight down in to Beartown, but from a stragetic standpoint, we all decided to get as close as we could to the end of the road. Found a decent enough spot about 1 mile from the trailhead with some decent tree cover and access to Bear Creek

Fire ban in San Juan County lifted on 7/29 and reinstated on 8/21. Finally got a break in 2020.

And every night was a starry one.

Day 1 of gaper slogging was the Nebo Group. Don’t ask me to remember all the peaks we climbed, cause I genuinely can’t remember. The only peak with a name was Nebo, the other 3 were unnamed, so if it’s the year 2020, the area got surveyed in the mid 1800’s and a peak still doesn’t have a name then I don’t have the interest in remembering them. Despite having the only summit with a name, Nebo did in fact have the sweetest view. I’m not really going to describe this day in any detail cause the peaks are completely brainless. Beautiful, but brainless. You can probably exert almost 0% brain activity and get at least 3 of the 4 summits. Ben, Steve and Kyle – slaves to the 13er list – went after whatever the southern most 13er was. Kevin and I got 3 of the 4 stopping at 13,230. Matt saw a pristine lake and called it quits after Nebo. We all had a good day. Some highlights.

Heading towards the first unnamed 13er from Hunchback Pass.

I think this is Nebo’s summit with 13,230 behind. Sweet view in all directions.

Nebo’s summit looking West in to heart of the Wemi.

We all split at Nebo, with the professional gaper sloggers heading further South, Kevin and I tagging on 13,230 (which had a front row panoramic view of Rio Grand Pyramid) and Matt retreating to his spot at the lake. Not sure what the name of this lake was, it was the smaller one immediately NE of Nebo off the Continental Divide trail. We both sampled the goods:

We swam all the way to that little island. It was as amazing as it looks folks.

Steve later in the day looking towards Nebo.

We had to take what appears to be the CD/Nebo Creek trail to the junction with Vallecito and then up the all too familiar slog back up to Hunchback Pass. We had to refill water on the way up cause it was getting hot. Made it back to the car – Strava said it was a 11.9 mile, 5034 vertical, 5.5 hour day, but my Strava can be way off sometimes.

We all reconvened at camp and the feast for the night was double cheeseburgers for all, seasoned with Montreal Steak seasoning and marinated in Worcestershire sauce. Pretty glorious if you ask me. But I was beginning to worry if we were going to run out of beer, as Kevin and Matt were hitting the Gin & Tonics hard and their beer contributions were pretty weak. I’ll give Kevin an A for effort as Modus did in fact used to be good – but it sucks now. Not sure if Ska got a new brewmaster at some point, but its an undrinkable malt bomb. I’m not saying that as a beer snob, go buy one and report back. Fortunately I picked up the slack with some Outer Range and Weldwerks.

Steve lounging at camp looking North towards the Poles.

Not keenly interested in another mindless slog fest – Kevin, Matt and I put together a plan the night before to hit Hunchback/White Dome/Peak 1. We were told it was a “walk in the park”. Now I take most of the blame for it, but it was far from a walk in the park. Anyways, we made the bone jarring drive back up 520 to the Beartown TH. Since Matt’s 4Runner was a lease, we’d park it each day at that steep stream crossing and just hoof the remaining mile to the TH. Apparently a dozer had been back there smoothing out the road, but I failed to see the difference.

Anyways – if you think the Nebo group is brainless, getting up to Hunchback from Hunchback Pass is even more brainless. We found a nice grassy ramp from the trail to the East ridge and once on it – you can put your brain on airplane mode. I’d suggest taking it out of airplane mode once you reach the summit though cause the other side of Hunchback is rather exposed.

Now again, I take most of the responsibility for the remainder of our day after Hunchback being a clusterf**k cause I admittedly hadn’t done any research on these peaks. But once we reached Hunchback and looked over at White Dome, none of us could really see an obvious path up it from the NE side. What ensued was the 3 of us circumnavigating the entire mountain to the White Dome/Peak 1 saddle. By then Matt and Kevin – amateur gaper sloggers – had had enough. I’m not sure if I’m getting early onset Old Man Strength or I still have gaper slog blood in my veins, but I went for Peak 1 with the plan to assess once I returned to the saddle. Views from the summit of Peak 1 were pretty sick, but all I could think about was how much sick they were probably from Peak 2. But there was no way in hell I was gonna go that far so I backtracked to the saddle. I noticed Kevin and Matt made the hellacious descent down to some random lake west of Eldorado Lake, so I decided to just go for White Dome. After some annoying scrambling and a sweet knife edgy summit, I embarked on the descent down to Eldorado, which was anything but pleasant. Some shots:

White Dome from Hunchback. I’m sure there’s a route in there, so save the criticism.

Pano from One.

View from White Dome with Vallecito Lake in the foreground. Nebo and Oso in the distance

This was a spectacular vantage point of the earth. Climbing the interior of the Weminuche is great but admiring them from these easier summits to the North is equally as rewarding. I’m glad I felt this way cause I would need every endorphin I had in order to mentally and emotionally survive the descent. I was mostly able to surf some scree, until it turned to larger boulders. The section between the scree and the larger more stable boulder field was the worst – but I was down it, like usual, before i knew it. Kevin and Matt were gone so I pushed on ahead to Eldorado Lake. I found them on the opposite end of the shore so I had to circumnavigate to reach them. By the time I got to them, it was drizzling and the entrance in to the lake was sharp rocks covered in loose mud, so the lake swim was short and unrewarding. We finished beers, found the trail and made way to whatever that saddle is north of Hunchback Mtn, before descending down in to Kite Lake on a well established trail. Thunder threatened briefly but vanished as soon as it arrived. It got hot again, so another soak in Bear Creek was in order. Shots of descent off White Dome and hike from Eldorado :

Typical shitty San Juan descent.

Much welcomed rain.

A cold soak was in order once we reached camp. Kevin and Matt did full body submersions. Later that evening we feasted on poblano, chipotle ground beef tacos – served by chef Steve. We also ran out of alcohol and had to dive in to Ben’s stash of Odell IPA’s. Some shots of the last night at camp:

Main part of our site.

Kevin taking care of his muscle pain.

Got some good embers going and took care of almost all of our garbage.

Kyle took off that evening since he had been gaper slogging basically the entire month of August. Steve took off in the morning to go gaper slog somewhere on the other side of the San Juans and the rest of us moseyed on up to the pass to hit Greenhalgh and Sheep. Kevin, Matt and I could only muster the motivation for Sheep, while Ben went for both – and we all made it back to the car roughly around the same time (to give you an idea of Ben’s gaper slogging pace).

Matt had to make a 1:30 flight back to Denver, with Kevin and I splitting up the drive with a peak of our choosing somewhere off 50 on the way home. Before splitting off with Ben, we all took a dip in Blue Mesa Res.

This was the week 70 was closed cause of the Grizzly Gulch fire outside Glenwood Canyon, so the traffic along 50 and 285 was biblical. I took pleasure in flicking off campers from the beach as they rode by.

After saying our goodbyes, Kevin and I nabbed some pizza in Gunny and made our way East in to the unknown. We had originally set sights on Italian Mountain outside Crested Butte, but after reading a story about a camper that exploded along Cottonwood Pass, we decided we wanted some place with a Gaper-Free Guarantee. I had never driven Marshall Pass from the Sargents side so we just said f**k it and gave it a shot. We were not dissapointed. Incredible area with tons of dispersed camping galore.

Shot of Marshall Pass area from somewhere near the top of the pass.

We were going to do Chipeta but at the last minute decided to settle for Ouray since Kevin had never done it before and it was 3 miles shorter. Glad we did as the next morning was one of those picture perfect Sawatch mornings.

Pano from Ouray looking South towards Antora.

Looking North towards Aetna group.

Summit – end of the 2020 summer journey.

All in all, a great trip. Solid camping spots, smoke wasn’t terrible all things considered, lakes, rivers, classic Weminuche, IPA, starry nights, roaring fires and feasts. I’m glad to have numerous outings still to be enjoyed down there. The trip this year made me think of a quote from Crazy Earl in Full Metal Jacket :

“These are great days we’re living bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the earth – with beer! These hills we gaper slogged up today are the finest mountains we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we’re gonna miss not having any of these bastards around worth climbing” 

Thanks for reading.