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Engineer Mountain ascent
Despite being rather difficult (4th class) Engineer Mtn. is one of the more popular climbs in SW Colorado. It dominates the view from Hwy 550 (the road between Durango and Silverton), it stands alone (and therefore has an excellent view from the summit, despite being just shy of 13,000 ft.), and from trailhead to summit is only about 2.2 miles (though about 2400 ft elevation gain!) We took off Wednesday morning to climb it and saw about 5 other parties; I can't imagine doing this on a weekend.
Our planned early start was kiboshed by Britt suddenly deciding he needed to Sno-seal his boots, and then by major road repaving on 550, and we didn't start hiking until 9 am. Such a pretty hike, though! Across a hillside thick with tall flowering plants, through a lovely forest, and finally to a treeline meadow that seemed to be mostly wildflowers, where we got our first good view of the peak since the road.
Then we had to go up. And up. First we trudged on steep loose red dirt, then we hit the limestone talus and it was a bit easier going - until we got to the band of cliffs that rings the peak. Fortunately there was a really nifty notch to climb up through, but it was definitely a scramble, with some serious exposure in places - a misstep would have meant a quick 500-foot descent. After that it was more talus - the whole top of Engineer is just a big rockpile.
We reached the summit at 11:20; there was a small group from a summer camp there, including 5 girls around 8 years old. We were impressed they'd made it up - some of the rocks we'd had to climb over were bigger than they were! The view from the top was lovely although marred by wildfire haze.
We spent a pleasant 40 minutes or so on the summit having lunch and hanging out, but the afternoon thunderstorms were clearly moving in, so we decamped around noon. Needless to say it was much faster going down than it was going up, although downclimbing the notch was a slow and spooky business. We were in the car by 1:30 and headed back home.
(In case you missed the clever inline links: view from highway, view from meadow, notch, view from top.)
Our planned early start was kiboshed by Britt suddenly deciding he needed to Sno-seal his boots, and then by major road repaving on 550, and we didn't start hiking until 9 am. Such a pretty hike, though! Across a hillside thick with tall flowering plants, through a lovely forest, and finally to a treeline meadow that seemed to be mostly wildflowers, where we got our first good view of the peak since the road.
Then we had to go up. And up. First we trudged on steep loose red dirt, then we hit the limestone talus and it was a bit easier going - until we got to the band of cliffs that rings the peak. Fortunately there was a really nifty notch to climb up through, but it was definitely a scramble, with some serious exposure in places - a misstep would have meant a quick 500-foot descent. After that it was more talus - the whole top of Engineer is just a big rockpile.
We reached the summit at 11:20; there was a small group from a summer camp there, including 5 girls around 8 years old. We were impressed they'd made it up - some of the rocks we'd had to climb over were bigger than they were! The view from the top was lovely although marred by wildfire haze.
We spent a pleasant 40 minutes or so on the summit having lunch and hanging out, but the afternoon thunderstorms were clearly moving in, so we decamped around noon. Needless to say it was much faster going down than it was going up, although downclimbing the notch was a slow and spooky business. We were in the car by 1:30 and headed back home.
(In case you missed the clever inline links: view from highway, view from meadow, notch, view from top.)
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I should also point out that we, um, didn't quite go the best way through the notch on the way up, and found an easier descent.
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