climb of Jupiter Mountain 15-17 July

[ilanarama]

After being thwarted by illness and weather for two weekends running, we were finally able to get out to the Weminuche Wilderness for a three-day backpack. Our plan was to climb Jupiter Mountain, at 13,830 the 92nd highest mountain in Colorado.




We hiked in on the Endlich Mesa trail, which has a high trailhead (near treeline) and then climbs to over 12,000 feet before plunging down to City Reservoir (the Durango water supply - it's deep in the wildnerness, though) at around 10,600 feet. Then we had to climb back up to Lake Marie, again just about at treeline, 11,600 ft or so. We had been planning to camp on Silver Mesa, which would have made the round-trip to Jupiter shorter, but it rained quite a bit in the afternoon and we got a little lost around City Reservoir (due to some trail re-routing that was badly done), which caused us to cross the Florida river at a difficult and scary spot and also end up on the wrong trail which added a couple of miles (!!) to our hike, making it 9 or so miles with lots of elevation change. By the time we actually got to Lake Marie it was after 7, and I was exhausted. Britt was not too exhausted to catch trout for dinner, though.

The next morning we got going early; it would be at least a 10-mile round-trip to Jupiter's summit, and we were planning a route different from what the guidebook suggested. The standard route from our side of the wilderness would be to go over Columbine Pass, descend 1500 feet, and then go up the southwest slopes of Jupiter. The 'descent' part didn't appeal to us. We wanted to try going up to Columbine Pass, then following the ridge to Jupiter's summit. Hey, we saw mountain goat foothoofprints on the way! It must be possible!

Except that mountain goats have four-wheelhoof drive, and we don't. We hit two notches that made us descend and have to work back around them, including one rather thoughtful (but short) downclimb that was on the edge of being technical. The second notch had an interesting fin of gray rock in it, very different from the surrounding rock. Also, the weather was threatening to get truly scary, with the afternoon thunderheads starting to accumulate and roll over the big peaks. But it was very pretty, with the big 14ers of Eolus, Windom, and Sunlight ahead and to our left, and below us to the right the lovely Hazel Lake. And yes, that's the Windom our boat is named after. Britt's climbed it three times and I've climbed it twice.

After much arduous work we managed to make it all the way along the summit ridge and to the...false summit, grr, and then up some rather large blocks and to the summit yay! Needless to say, though, after the rigors of what we named Goat Ridge, we opted for the standard descent. During which we saw...mountain goats! They are totally unafraid of humans, and the baby mountain goat (kid?) we saw was made out of 100% pure cute.



Going up Goat Ridge



Summit yay! To my left is Sunlight Peak, to my right is Windom Peak, and the jaggedy curtain-shaped mountain farther to the right is Jagged Mountain, which we climbed a few years ago (along with Windom and three other peaks) and is one of the toughest 13ers in Colorado.



The cutest kid I saw all weekend!

Of course descending to the Columbine Pass trail on the, um, wrong side of Columbine Pass made our total peakbagging dayhike about 4000 vertical feet climbed and 12 miles. Oog. The next day we hiked out, taking care to use the correct trail this time; still, we had the big climb out of City Reservoir (where Britt tortured some trout) to Endlich Mesa, and we were definitely pretty tired by the time we finally reached the vehicle.

More photos are on my flickr page (16 in all, including the map)

Comments

[ilanarama.livejournal.com]

Handies Peak and Mt. Sherman, are famous walk-ups. I saw kids on Handies. Also, Mt. Elbert, despite being the highest mountain in Colorado, is actually a very easy hike (but a long day).