Fri, Jul 24, 2020
|
With: | Tom Becht |
Eric Smith |
A rest day.
Mt. Ouray lies in the southern part of the Sawatch Range in
Central Colorado. It comes up less than 30ft short of the
14,000-foot level but has more than 2,600ft of prominence. With
a poor weather forecast in the cards, we picked it as an easy
summit that we could finish well before noon, about 3,200ft of
gain and 5.5mi roundtrip. We parked at a public use cabin off
Marshall Pass Rd, an old toll road going over the Continental
Divide. An unsigned trail heads uphill through the forest,
eventually petering out
above treeline.
From there, we followed
the ridgeline
north along the Continental Divide in a wide arc
to Pt. 12,685ft. A use trail can be followed for most of the way
to the summit, picking its way around rock outcrops and through
the
rock and talus
that covers much of the ridgeline. From Pt.
12,685ft the route turns east and northeast, a rolling, gentle
gradient at first, then growing steep as it makes its way up to
the summit. This stretch all the way to the summit was done
in the clouds with nary a view to be had. Cold and wind drove us
to
put on more clothes. We got to
the summit in a bit over two
hours, just as a few raindrops came whipping across the ridgeline.
Eric passed out some summit chocolate which we greedily consumed
while digging in our packs for raingear. Tom, wearing only shorts,
declared, "I have no pants!", his way of saying "Let's go down!"
After he repeated it a second time, I looked over at him with
little sympathy, declaring, "You say that like it's our fault." I
told him he could take off if he liked, and apparently he did like
because he was gone in a flash. Eric and I wouldn't see him again
until we got back to the jeep. Eric, a bit slow on the downhills
and a little unsure about navigating back through the clouds, got
me to escort him down at
an easy pace. The rain never
really developed and we got some
fleeting views on our
way down to Pt. 12,685ft that we hadn't gotten earlier. Eric spied an
elk herd
about 1,000ft lower in the bowl on the north side of the ridge. It
was a good-sized one, more than 50 strong. We asked Tom later if
he had seen them, but no, he'd been too focused on getting out of
the cold and missed them. The clouds never cleared, but we were
able to get views
south and west as we descended from Pt.
12,685ft, shortcutting our ascent route with a pleasant descent
down a steep grassy slope to return to
the good trail.
We
found Tom sitting on a log next to the jeep, having
beaten us down by 30min.
It wasn't yet 10:30a when we finished up, but time to call it a
day. 80% chance of afternoon thunderstorms had us looking for
alternative activities. After returning to US285, we headed south
for about an hour through the vast
San Luis Valley
to the town
of Alamosa where we had a pleasant outdoor pizza lunch and ran
a few errands in town. Afterwards we had more driving to get us
to our campsite outside the Cielo Vista Ranch for our hike of
Culebra the next day...
Continued...
For more information see these SummitPost pages: Mt. Ouray
This page last updated: Sat Jul 25 13:39:50 2020
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