August, 1992
With a four-day weekend arranged (originally, as a back-up in the event of bad weather on Longs earlier in the season) I had a number of peakbagging options available to me. The time off afforded a perfect opportunity to both climb one of the more distant peaks, and bag more than one peak. And since I felt the need for a more interesting climb than the straightforward walk-ups done so far in the season, I chose Sneffels for its class 2+ route. A second peak, closer to home would round out the card. Missouri seemed to fit the bill, and the plan was complete.
Friday morning I left for Ouray, one of my favorite tourist traps. While still east of Montrose, I spotted Sneffels, and I eagerly watched the peak loom larger as I approached the little town. I had made reservations for two nights at the Alpine Inn, and found a cozy, nicely decorated room when I arrived. One doesn’t often find a room with much personality for $45 per night, but the ruffled pillow shams, quilted comforter, and homey wall-hangings were very nice touches.
After I had checked in, I grabbed the maps and guidebooks and went to scout out the trailhead. Driving up the dirt road toward Yankee Boy Basin, I found everything where it was supposed to be. Heeding one guidebook’s advice about parking at the 10,700-foot junction before the road became rougher, I went no further. Returning to town, I had a decent but pedestrian dinner at Cecelia’s restaurant, a family-oriented joint across the street from the Inn.
At 6:10 the next morning, I was back in Yankee Boy Basin, hiking up the dirt road from the parking area, glad to see a clear blue sky above me. The road seemed to have grown several more offshoots than appeared on my map, but choosing the correct route wasn’t difficult. Most of the branches led to the many -- and popular -- camping spaces along the road. Decaying mine structures and prospect holes, evidence of the area’s rich mining history, dotted the hillsides.
As the road worked its way around the north side of Stony Mountain, rugged Gilpin Peak began to dominate the view. The road was becoming rougher, indeed, and the campers fewer and farther between. After about a mile, I had crossed treeline and entered upper Yankee Boy Basin. After some brief confusion at a point where the road began to switchback upwards, but a foot trail continued straight, I arrived at the four-wheel-drive trailhead, at about 12,300 feet. There was a good-sized parking area, and a sign designating the start of the Blue Lakes Pass Trail. Someone had inscribed "Mt. Sneffels, right 1/2" below the other destinations and mileages.
From the high trailhead, the trail wound westward across the rocks. Sneffels’ jagged, pinnacled southwest ridge drew my gaze, but the peak’s summit was not yet visible. I set off, making good time across the relatively flat scree. After perhaps 10 minutes, I found the cairned junction where my route left the main trail, turning northward into a broad scree gully.
This moderate gully would provide a route north into the saddle southeast of Sneffels and northwest of Kismet. Conveniently, the gully offered both talus for the ascent and dirt alleys for a quick, boot-skiing descent later in the day. As I climbed, I studied the dramatic southwest ridge, which allegedly hides a class 3 route to the summit. Soon, I had climbed high enough to look down on Blue Lakes Pass, and the main trail switchbacking up to cross it (see photo). 13,694-foot Gilpin Peak still rose above me to the south.
At last the slope eased, and I found myself in the narrow saddle between Sneffels and Kismet. My route was supposed to climb the obvious couloir running up Sneffels’ southeast face to within 20 feet of the notch at its top, but the top one-third of the 500-foot couloir was snowpacked. One guidebook had mentioned a lower couloir exit onto broken ledges if the snow was unappealing, so I started up into the rocky couloir (see photo).
A few minutes of talus-hopping brought me, and a collection of four other climbers I found myself with, to the bottom of the snow. One of the other climbers sought a rock route out, onto the couloir’s western rib, but found the climbing difficult and the exposure unpleasant. I seized the initiative, and began kicking steps into the snow near its border with the rock. After twenty or thirty feet of this, I found a very narrow passage which led out of the main couloir toward the west. Some four-point climbing along the lower passage face brought me out into another narrow, steep and rocky -- but mostly snow-free -- gully, which I scrambled to its top.
From the top of the gully, I climbed carefully up the ledges, and at 9:50, onto the small summit, exhilarated and with a sense of accomplishment I hadn’t experienced since climbing Longs Peak. A few puffy clouds floated in a deep blue sky which stretched from San Juan summit to San Juan summit. The 10 or so of us on top soaked in the view: the Blue Lakes, shimmering in the sunlight 2300 feet below us, rugged Gilpin Peak standing defiant to the south, the ski slopes of Telluride off to the southwest. To the north lay the lush, serene Uncompahgre River valley, running off toward Montrose; to the east ran a succession of peaks: Cirque Mountain, Teakettle Mountain, Potosi Peak.
Things were a bit crowded on the small summit until a few folks started down. With a little more room in which to move around, we took pictures of each other, snacked, and generally gushed about the scenery.
Although I could have spent another hour on top (and the weather would have permitted it) I didn’t really want to descend solo, so I started down when the last group remaining on top started down, at about 10:10. They were an interesting foursome from Fort Collins, whom I had overheard discussing high-altitude (i.e., 16,000+ feet) acclimatization. Chatting with them on the way down, I would learn that they had made four trips to Kilimanjaro and had scaled the Mexican volcanoes.
After descending the upper ledges, the foursome split up, taking two different routes back toward the main couloir. I chose a third, which led down a short rock face and into the lower part of the couloir exit I had found while ascending. While working my way back down the snow in the lower couloir, I was treated to a glissade and self-arrest exhibition by one of the few climbers who had brought along an ice axe, a self-professed neophyte with the tool.
The other piece of equipment I saw put to use was the hard hat. Not any more of an absolute necessity on this peak than an ice axe in August, several climbers had them and a few wore them. I didn’t see one save the day, but shouts of "Rock!" did echo from the peak on more than one occasion.
By 11:00, I again stood in the saddle between Sneffels and Kismet, having gotten in some good, face-in downclimbing practice. The foursome had proven quicker at descending, and had already done the short hike over to the other peak, really a collection of rocky points. Still pumped up from the climb, I joined them. One of the older man’s sons was carefully posed on a precarious, rocky point suspended over a thousand feet of nothingness, commenting on the "looseness" of the structure and waiting to be photographed. "You show these to your wife?" I asked. "Yeah," he replied, "it makes for great sex, ’cause she never knows when it might be the last time."
The aphrodisiac photos taken, we returned to the saddle, and started down. A routine descent led me back to my truck at 1:40.
With sore feet but an ear-to-ear grin, I unlocked the cab, shed my pack, traded my boots for flip-flops, and started back down the road to Ouray.
After a nap, a shower, and dinner at the Coachlight (a good, marinated filet mignon) I spent the few remaining hours of daylight taking pictures of Sneffels’ abrupt and photogenic north face from various points along the East Dallas Creek forest access road. Unfortunately, the difficult lighting and my failure to bracket exposures would lead to disappointment when the film was processed.
I was up early Sunday morning, anxious to catch the peak from a different angle and with different lighting, but found an overcast sky and drizzle when I lifted the curtain. I got cleaned up anyway, had breakfast back at Cecelia’s, and packed up the truck. Bidding a fond farewell to Ouray and Mount Sneffels, I pulled out, back toward Montrose, heading ultimately for Buena Vista and Missouri Mountain -- by way of McClure Pass, Aspen, and Independence Pass.
My 19th fourteener, obviously, was a favorite, and one I shall look forward to climbing a second time (perhaps from Blaine Basin).
Update: July, 2001
On July 22nd, I climbed to within 150 feet of the summit via the same route. (What’s this new distaste for exposure all about?!) There have been several changes in Yankee Boy Basin since my 1992 ascent. First, the road in is now a "fee area." You’ll have to pay $5 or Ranger Rick will have a chat with you. Second, the road to the standard trailhead seems to have become much, much rougher. There were a couple of passenger cars at the trailhead and slightly further up the road -- but not many. Mustangs and Camaros need not apply. (Of course, 4WD will get you to the high trailhead at nearly 12,300 feet.) And the camping is much more tightly regulated than I recall it having been back in ’92. Fortunately, several things haven’t changed; this is still a spectacularly beautiful area for hiking and climbing.
