MT. AETNA
(13,745 ft.)TAYLOR MOUNTAIN
(13,651 ft.)July 1, 2004
By Tim Briese
Mount Aetna and Taylor Mountain strike an imposing view a few miles to the north from Monarch Pass and the Monarch Ski Area. Indeed, one day when I was skiing there someone asked me if those two tall peaks were 14ers! Their prominence caught my attention and made me determined to climb them someday.
I left home at 4:15 a.m. on the first day of July with my two labs and headed into the mountains. The first hint of twilight was already appearing in the northeastern sky at this early hour. I drove to the tiny village of Garfield on Highway 50 on the approach to Monarch Pass and found the turnoff for the four wheel drive Forest Road 230 on the west end of town. I could have four-wheeled a mile or more up the road but felt like walking instead today. A sign at a horse stable nearby warned that parking was prohibited on the private property at the base of the road, so I four-wheeled up the steep road about 200 feet and parked at 9700 feet elevation at a pull-off in the woods at the first switchback.
At 7:05 I struck off up the old road on foot with my dogs. The route headed up the valley of the Middle Fork of the South Arkansas River, and I could hear the river thundering down in the woods below. I presently passed a couple of private cabins, and after a mile passed a junction where a trail left the road on the left to go to Boss Lake. Two-tenths of a mile beyond that I came to another junction at 10,540 feet, where an old mining road, numbered A230C@ on a sign, headed sharply uphill to the right. I took that old road and climbed three-fourths of a mile up to a basin between Aetna and Taylor called Hoffman Park. The road ended at timberline and I continued a short distance into the basin and selected a route to bushwhack up to the right onto Taylor=s southwest ridge on solid talus and grass. After a vigorous climb I reached the crest of the broad ridge at 12,900 feet. I sat down for a break and gazed at Aetna across the valley. A chilly wind blew out of the north. After resting for a few minutes I resumed the climb and hiked a third of a mile up a grass and rock-covered slope on good footing and reached the summit at 10:30.
On the summit I was rewarded with fine views of Shavano and Tabeguache, as well as Aetna, and Monarch Pass. I looked across the valley to the northeast at the now-closed scree slope that I had once gone up on a climb of Tabeguache from the Jennings Creek approach. The summit register showed that I was the ninth person to set foot on the mountain so far this year, and that about 40 had done so the year before. The temperature was a brisk 38 degrees. Clouds were puffing up into the sky, and although they were not threatening yet, I decided I had better get going to Aetna, so I left Taylor= s summit after only 20 minutes. The ridge hike from Taylor to Aetna is a straightforward Class 2 hike over grass and talus, involving a 600 foot descent to a 13,020 foot saddle and then a direct 700 foot climb up a ridge to Aetna=s summit. The summits are about 1.3 miles apart. Along the way I stopped to gaze down into the scenic drainage to the north.
It took me just over an hour to hike from Taylor to Aetna, and I stepped on Aetna=s summit a few minutes before noon. I looked back at the ridge to Taylor while I rested and ate my lunch. A register was nowhere to be found on Aetna=s summit. I peered down into an immense rockslide gully that runs over 3000 feet down Aetna=s south face from the summit all the way down into the woods far below. The sky was now filled with clouds and I cast a wary eye upward, but presently the clouds began to assume a more friendly aspect as a drier air mass began to move in from the west. I had planned on returning to the saddle and dropping back down into Hoffman Park on my return, but the favorable weather encouraged me to take a longer, more adventurous descent route to the north. After half an hour I left the top and headed down Aetna=s northwest ridge on steep talus. I followed the ridge for about a mile and a half, climbing up over a couple of minor points along the way, until I reached a saddle at 12,850 feet. It was great fun hiking along this ridge, and I enjoyed fine views down into drainages on each side, with Billings Lake and North Fork Reservoir to the right, and the Middle Fork drainage to the left. I observed an icy snowbank lying on the northwest shore of a small unnamed lake far below to the right, and I watched with interest as two white icebergs broke off and silently drifted across the water to the opposite shore, pushed along by the wind.
From the saddle I bushwhacked down a rocky slope to the west to drop into the upper end of the Middle Fork Valley, not far from Chalk Creek Pass at the head of the valley. I stopped to rest on a grassy slope and watched some elk in a meadow at timberline several hundred feet below. It was fun to visit this beautiful, secluded valley, especially on such a splendid summer afternoon. After a few minutes I continued down grassy slopes and entered the woods below and found my way down into the center of the valley, where I picked up the Hancock Lake Trail and turned left to take it down the valley toward my truck, which was parked about four miles away. I soon met a young backpacker coming up the trail, and then three riders on horseback. They were the first people I saw on the hike today. After a while the trail widened into a four wheel drive road. Mt. Aetna towered grandly above to the left, and I paused to marvel at the massive rockslide gully on its southern face.
At 4:20 I tramped back to my truck. I estimated that I climbed about 5000 feet of elevation gain on this outing and hiked eleven miles, at least two miles of which was on talus on the upper ridges and slopes. The talus was probably harder on the dogs than it was on me, though. Upon reaching the truck they immediately jumped in and slept all the way home.
