Huron Peak Trip Report
Trail: Northwest Slopes II (with abortive attempt of gully down climb), Class 2 (3 in gully), ~7 miles, ~3800 ft elevation gain
On Saturday, June 5th, 2004 I set out to hike Huron Peak with my friend Brian, Josh, and Josh's girlfriend Nayla. I had originally hoped to do a Sangre de Cristo but I recently injured my rotator cuff in my shoulder and the physical therapist suggested against any sort of prolonged couloir climb.
As Nayla had just flown in from New Jersey the previous week we decided to do a shorter hike and drove the 4WD road all the way to its end. Boy that was a fun road, I haven't been on the Crestone road yet but some people at the trailhead said it was longer but easier. Here is a picture of what we drove through.
I was lucky Brian let us bring his Ford Explorer because as much as I like to abuse my Escort there wouldn't have been a chance. We set out hiking at about 7:45 or so. There were very nice view from the trailhead.
The trail was reminiscent of the Belford trail, there were allot of switchbacks leading up to a pretty little Basin. The switchbacks had occasional small and easily passable snow drifts. I was lucky on this trip and was reunited with my little friends the Gray Jays. This time I caught a picture of Brian feeding one. This guy and his friend followed us up to treeline just like the last time I met with them.
We made it up to what Roach describes as a charming basin in about an hour. Now I have to say that I really respect Roach and find his guide book to be invaluable but the mileage listing has to be dead wrong. There is no way this hike was round trip 4 miles. I met one guy who read it was close to 6 miles in another guide. Anyways when we arrived at the basin the trail to the steps was totally covered in snow, melting snow... I was not about to posthole if I could avoid it so we decided to cross over the rocks to a snow slope which was still very solid. It looked like if we could kick steps uphill for maybe a couple hundred feet then we would reach an area with bare rock. The Rock could be easily upclimbed and would ultimately place us on a steep but snow-free approach to the ridge. At this point Josh and Nayla turned back. She had put on a good show but I'd imagine one week after leaving sea level is not enough time to hit a 14er. My only regret was that although they didn't mind waiting at the car and had a mini picnic both Brian and I totally forgot to give them car keys.
THE BASIN
I headed up the snow slope and climbed the rocks, sure enough the way ahead was clear so I motioned for Brian to follow.
Once we were on the rocks we headed for the ridge. It turned out to be allot steeper and more obnoxious than it appeared below and there were sections with loose talus but it still beat post-holing. I decided to go on ahead so I could enjoy more time on the peak. The way up was pretty snow free and the day was beautiful.
The final little bit of trail before the peak was a snow covered ridge with a cornice to the left and a nice big drop.
There was a broiling cloud rising over the ledge which was to pretty to pass up taking a picture of.
I made the summit around 10:30 and spent about two hours up there just enjoying the views, a neighboring peak had two frozen lakes in a basin.
One of the great things about the view was that the mountains seemed to extend forever.
Brian showed up a bit later and we spent some time talking to people, eating, and just basically enjoying the great weather we were having.
At about 12:30 we decided to try the down climb between two ridges into a gully. The picture below does not do it justice. We were at 14000 ft and the bottom is about 10,500 ft that should have been a clue.
After going down a good ways the slope became increasingly steeper and the rock looser. Several towers with unstable rock loomed in front. I climbed up and over several but the difficulty began to increase from easy 3rd to easy 4th on loose rock. I wasn't sure if the towers I saw below me were safely passable or not and rather than continue to drop elevation to find out I decided it would be more prudent to turn around and go back the way we came. I don't mind climbing things but the loose rock was really annoying.
We headed down the standard route and unfortunately the way we took up was as slushy as the original field in the basin so we opted to just post-hole it across the basin. We sank in pretty far but eventually came to the other side where we changed socks and headed back to the car. We arrived back at the car around 3 and headed home. Hopefully I'll do an Elk or Sangre next week. All in all Huron is a beautiful hike and this approach shouldn't be missed.