A Weminuche Dozen, Part III: Hunchback Pass Trio

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After summiting Mt. Silex and The Guardian, Steve and I returned to our camp and packed up under darkening late-morning skies. We slowly but surely worked our way out Leviathan Creek and up the Vallecito drainage to a nice campsite just off the trail on the trail around 11,500 ft to the north of a few prominent waterfalls. Tired but ecstatic to be nearing the finish line of our trip, we set up camp under a nice sunset and cooked up some grub before trading it in a tad earlier than we had in nights previous. Read more…

A Weminuche Dozen, Part II: Grenadier Gluttony

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As related in Part the First, we drove from Denver and hiked into Leviathan basin on day one, losing the way to the lake in the dark, but then managing a textbook traverse to Jagged pass in the predawn hours of day two, leading to the reward of the thrill and majesty of Jagged, subsequently fun slab scrambling on neighboring Leviathan, and concluding with the expansive views afforded from Vallecito. After returning to camp from these three peaks early in the afternoon, we decided to move from the surprisingly flat spot on the hillside to a premier creekside location 150 feet lower and closer to the Peak Nine ridge line. This creek is shown on the topo map and it falls steeply into the northern part of Leviathan basin from the unnamed lake by peak Nine. Keep reading…

A Weminuche Dozen, Part I: Jagged et al

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A couple years back Steve and I hatched a plan for a backpack into the Weminuche with the primary aim being to summit Jagged Mountain. Any idea of taking the train was dashed early on as neither of us really wanted to ride that thing again (it would have been my 5th time) and not long into the conversation we began talking about including other peaks to the northeast of Jagged which the train would have precluded. I had personally never been to Hunchback Pass or the Vallecito Creek drainage for that matter, and so an approach from the north via Beartown was thrown out there as an option and quickly became our primary access plan. Read more…

Tenmile Traverse In Photos: Peak 1 to Crystal

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As I sit to write this post, two things are my mind. First, there is a lot of great beta on the Tenmile Traverse, including some excellent TR’s. I relied heavily on Steve Knapp’s, Anton Krupicka’s, and Geojed’s reports while prepping for this. Thank you to each of them for the excellent details and info. Because of this, I do not feel I need to add all that much more to the collective knowledge set for this route. Others have documented it well. Keep reading…