CHICAGO BASIN
WINDOM PEAK (14,082 ft.)
SUNLIGHT PEAK (14,059 ft.)
MT. EOLUS (14,083 ft.)
July 30-August 1,1999
By Tim Briese
(Note: For a trip report and photos from a 2004 trip I made to Chicago Basin, see my Jupiter Mountain report on the More Climbs page.)
The wilderness trip into Chicago Basin has been described as the epitome of the Colorado 14er climbing experience. It involves a ride on the Durango to Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, a multi-day backpack into a remote but heavily visited area deep in the San Juan Mountains, and the climbing of three rugged 14ers. I was eager to tackle this adventure, but I didn't want to do it alone, so when my friend Brian announced his plans to go there I gladly agreed to join him.
I left home a little before noon and headed to Durango, where I was to meet Brian. I was feeling rather ill from a recent bout with a virus, and I was a little concerned about heading into the backcountry the next morning, where medical attention would be far away. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity, though.
I hadn’t been to the southwestern part of the state for a few years, and when I drove into Durango a little before 6 p.m. I was surprised by all the growth and development that had occurred there since I had last visited. The charm and attraction of this area has certainly not gone unnoticed. I stopped near the busy train station and ran from my truck to the building in the middle of a thundershower to get my ticket for the train ride the next morning. Afterwards I met Brian at the motel where we were to stay, and then went with him to dinner at a nearby restaurant.
After a short and restless night of sleep, we rose early and went to McDonalds for a pancake breakfast before parking our vehicles and boarding the train. The train left the station at 7:30 and we began the scenic ride north into the San Juans through the Animas River canyon. Especially spectacular was a stretch where the train was high above the river on a narrow ledge on the face of a steep cliff. Unfortunately Brian and I were unable to sit together because we had purchased our tickets at different times. At about 10 a.m. we reached the Needleton stop in the heart of the mountains and got off the train with about two dozen other backpackers. I was still feeling ill, but I took a couple of Rolaids and drank a quart of water and soon felt better.
It was a bright, sunny morning as we shouldered our backpacks and walked across the nice footbridge above the roaring Animas River. The trail went south along the east side of the river for a half mile or so before it turned east and followed the Needle Creek drainage into the Weminuche Wilderness Area. We gradually climbed higher on the fine trail as Needle Creek thundered beside us. I was thankful for the nice trail, for I noted that this would be particularly rugged terrain in which to conduct a bushwhack, with very steep, rocky slopes and heavy timber. We stopped frequently for water and rest breaks, and visited a few times with two older climbers from Colorado Springs, Dick and Richard. As we got higher the valley began to open up into gorgeous, flowery meadows with views of the rugged mountains around us. The higher we went the more spectacular the scenery became. At the upper end of Chicago Basin we left the main trail and made a short, steep climb on a rough trail into a smaller basin above. We wanted to position ourselves at a high elevation camp in order to reduce the amount of elevation gain needed on our climbs to the summits on the following days. We hiked past some beautiful cascades of water running across smooth granite slabs as we climbed up to a broad, level bench at timberline where we selected a campsite. We had hiked some seven miles from the Needleton train stop.
There was a nice campsite beside a stream that had already been claimed by Dick and Richard, but we found another equally as nice about 50 yards to the west beneath two big fir trees. This was as high up as we could camp, for a sign along the trail just beyond our camp informed us that no camping was permitted in the basin beyond. It was one of the most magnificent places I had ever camped, with stunning beauty all around. There were at least five waterfalls pouring into the basin around us, with one big one roaring about two hundred yards to the east. Tall, jagged mountains towered above us, with the summits of Eolus and Windom visible to the north and east. Especially grand was the summit of Peak 18 directly above to the northeast. Far below to the south we could see the floor of the Needle Creek valley, with a high, rugged ridge beyond. Tall, lush plants filled the basin around us. It was an idyllic paradise, the likes of which I had never seen before.
That evening we cooked our dinner and ate under the shelter of the two big trees by our tents as a rain shower pattered down. It would have been nice to sit around a cozy campfire to keep warm, but none are permitted in Chicago Basin. When the rain stopped I went to scout the trail above that we would be following in the morning while Brian visited with our two friendly neighbors below. At dusk Brian and I stood about our camp and discussed our climbing strategy. We planned to climb Sunlight and Windom the next day, and Eolus the following morning before backpacking out to catch the train that afternoon. Most 14ers can be climbed on dayhikes, and a handful require one-night backpacks, but these are the only ones so remote that at least a two-night backpack is required, for all but the extremely fit. That night as I crawled into my tent to go to sleep I was struck by the remoteness of this place. It was exciting to be in the depths of the wilderness, but I was uneasy about being so far from help in the event of an emergency.
At about 4:30 a.m. we rose in the moonlight and prepared for our day of climbing. It was damp and chilly as we hit the trail with our flashlights at 5:15. We wanted to get an early start to beat the weather, which is a threat nearly every summer afternoon in the San Juans. We reached the beautiful Twin Lakes at 12,500 feet a little after six, just as the sun was starting to hit the high peaks. There was green, grassy tundra around the lakes and a few banks of snow remaining on north facing slopes. Two white goats watched us hike past. They were so tame they almost seemed domesticated.
We hiked higher up into the basin above the lakes, toward our goal of Sunlight and Windom Peaks. As we climbed higher on a rough climber’s trail we noticed that we were on the lower part of a ridge that led toward Windom. We had planned to climb the more difficult Sunlight first, but that would now require the loss of some of our precious elevation gain, so we decided to continue on and climb Windom first. We hiked upward on a talus covered slope in the early morning light. I was momentarily thrown off route by an errant cairn, but I soon rejoined Brian on the crest of Windom’s west ridge, which is the best route. It was an exciting scramble up the class two ridge over boulders and blocks to the summit, which we reached a little before eight a.m. This was the earliest either of us had ever summited a 14er. The views were magnificent in every direction. All around we could see the rugged Needle Mountains, with jagged peaks, blocks, and pinnacles stretching off into the distance. This was the essence of the Colorado mountain climbing experience, as we sat atop this wild and remote vantage point, deep in the heart of the San Juans, far from any roads or civilization. Beyond the mountains, far to the south, lay the open reaches of the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. This was an exciting climb to a marvelous summit, and I knew I wanted to return to this one sometime. We were fortunate to have the fine views that we did, for low clouds were already beginning to form in the moist air with a ceiling only a few hundred feet above us. Those early clouds warned of possible troublesome weather later.
I was pleasantly surprised to be able to reach my wife via cell phone from the summit. From this lofty spot I probably picked up a cell site out of Durango, some 30 miles to the south. She was relieved to hear from me, for she had heard numerous reports of flash flood warnings around the state since I had left home.
After spending 20 or 30 minutes on the summit we began our descent back down the ridge. We stopped and looked down the snowfilled “Widowmaker” couloir and briefly considered it for a possible descent route down into the basin between Windom and Sunlight, but quickly elected to continue further down Windom’s easy west ridge instead. Part of the way down the ridge we found a more gentle snow slope on which we glissaded down into the basin. Neither of us had an ice ax along, but Brian let me use one of his trekking poles for a braking tool on the snow. Once in the basin we hiked across a gentle snowfield to the base of the Red Couloir of Sunlight Peak. We rapidly climbed up the scree in the couloir to the Sunlight Saddle, buoyed along by adrenalin. From the saddle we followed the increasingly difficult south ridge toward the summit on a fairly well cairned route, making third and fourth class moves along the way, and we climbed through a rock window just before reaching the top.
At about 10 a.m. we scrambled up to a flat area where the summit USGS marker is located, and we paused to inspect the famous summit block, which is the true summit of Sunlight. The summit block is a precariously perched 30 foot high block that can be climbed on its south end by stepping across a two foot gap and pulling oneself up with a class four friction move a few feet to its top. After deciding that this was not life-threatening, I walked over to the block, stepped across the gap, looked down a thousand feet between my legs, and quickly pulled myself to the eerily dizzying top. It took cool nerves to sit atop the block. I straddled my legs over the block, as if astride a horse, not caring to stand up, with the thousand foot dropoff on the other side. After I scrambled back down and stepped over the attention-grabbing gap, Brian took his turn. The summit block is really not too difficult to climb in dry weather, at least for a long-legged person. I had never seen a summit with such a loose pile of massive blocks, and I wondered how it could have formed that way.
We spent an exhilarating hour at the top, thrilled with our accomplishment. We looked about at the magnificent views that came and went in the broken clouds that surrounded us, and waited for a while to get a clear photograph of the spectacular Sunlight Spire a few hundred yards to the south.
At about 11 a.m. we began our descent. We went part of the way back down the south ridge, but didn’t return all the way to the Red Couloir, opting instead to take a shortcut down a steep scree and talus-covered slope back into the basin. As we hiked back down through the basin we heard rumbles of thunder from a thunderstorm that passed by just to the south. We reached the Twin Lakes about noon.
We lounged around in the sunshine on the grassy shore of one of the lakes for a half hour or so, and visited a bit with Dick and Richard, who were doing the same after their climb of Eolus that morning. Brian and I began to discuss the previously unthinkable idea of an attempt of Eolus, the most difficult of the three 14ers here, that afternoon. We hadn’t seriously considered it before in the belief that the weather couldn’t possibly hold up that long. However, broad patches of blue sky had now appeared, so we decided to make a go at it. We headed up the trail toward Eolus, and climbed up into the basin below its east face. The weather actually improved as the afternoon went along, contrary to the typical pattern, as a drier air mass appeared to be moving in. We followed a long switchback to the right and scrambled up past a bank of snow to the saddle between Eolus and North Eolus. We carefully hiked across blocks of rock on the notorious Catwalk, a very narrow and exciting ridge that reminded me of the Devil’s Causeway in the Flat Tops that I had hiked across a few years before. The Catwalk narrowed to about three feet, with great exposure on both sides, and was not a place for those afraid of heights. After crossing the ridge we spent the next half hour or so picking our way up through the ledge system east of Eolus’ summit, where we faced some exposure in places. This part of the climb was especially exciting.
We stepped atop Eolus’ grand summit at about 2:45, achieving our third 14er of the day. Sunlight and Windom seemed like a long distance away on the other side of the Twin Lakes basin. It was hard to believe we had been way over there a few hours earlier. The weather was fairly clear, allowing us to soak in the incredible views in every direction. I could hardly pull my eyes away from all this grandeur, as I looked about at all the rugged peaks in the vast San Juans. Especially impressive were Pigeon and Turret Peaks about a mile to the northwest. I could see the Wilson group way off to the west, with the faraway deserts of the Four Corners region lying beyond to the west and south. Sitting on the very edge of the horizon were the Blue Mountains in Utah, 110 miles away. We could also just glimpse our tents at our camp down at timberline far below.
We left the summit a little after 3 p.m. and scrambled back down through the ledges and across the Catwalk. At the saddle I decided to climb up to the summit of North Eolus while Brian waited behind. The ascent was an easy and fun scramble that took less than ten minutes. The steep, smooth granite reminded me of climbing the Crestone Needle. After I came back down Brian decided to go up. As I sat and waited for him at the saddle for a few exhilarating minutes I thought about all we had done that day. In those moments of solitude I gazed about at the incredible grandeur around me, in one of the most magnificent places I’d ever been. This was one of life’s special moments.
We descended back down the trail to the lakes, with a glowing feeling of excitement inside about what we had seen and done that day. We had not seen anyone all day except for a handful of people near the lakes when we had been there at noon, but they were now gone. We were not in any particular hurry now, and we lounged on the grass by one of the lakes for a while before heading back down to our camp below. Some clouds moved in and it started raining a little just as we got back to camp at 6:45 p.m.
We ate dinner under the shelter of the two fir trees at camp as the rain sprinkled down, just as we had the night before. Richard walked up to our camp and asked if we had made it to Eolus, with a look of admiration and excitement on his face. We were exhausted and retired early, for we had been hiking for thirteen and a half hours, and had spent nearly twelve hours above 12,500 feet. Around 10 p.m. we were jolted awake by a scary thunderstorm that unleashed a multitude of lightning bolts all around us, some within a couple of hundred yards of our tents. As the thunder boomed around us I lay in a cold sweat fearing that lightning might strike the trees that we were camped under, but it never happened. I resolved that on future backpacks I would never again camp under tall, lone trees at timberline.
In the morning we awoke to a clear sky, and I lay in my sleeping bag for a while to keep warm until the sun broke over the mountains and shone on our camp. We would have been up early and on our way to Eolus, had we not climbed it the day before, but now we had the luxury of relaxing around camp, reveling in the magnificent scenery around us. Peak 18 was especially beautiful off to the east in the early morning light, with a soft carpet of green grass on the slopes below. I lay out my gear to dry on some smooth rocks nearby and sat down to eat breakfast. A couple of dozen goats visited us at our camp that morning, and watched us from just a few feet away. I was loathe to leave this spectacular place, and I sat on a rock down by the stream for a while, contemplating the sights and sounds around me.
At about 11 a.m. we hit the trail and hiked the seven miles back down to the Needleton train stop, which took about three and a half hours. We encountered numerous hikers coming up the trail along the way. On the entire outing we hiked about 21 miles and climbed about 8500 feet of elevation gain.
We waited along the banks of the Animas River for our train to arrive, and were pleased to be able to get on a train an hour earlier than we expected, and left Needleton at 3:15. It was a pleasant ride back to Durango, the latter part of which was in the rain. We eagerly checked in at the Super 8 Motel, showered up, and had a wonderful steak dinner that evening at the Ore House, which tasted especially good after three days of backpack food.
In the morning I left Durango early and picked up my daughter at a church camp in Pagosa Springs, and drove on home, where we arrived around 1 p.m.
This adventure was the grandest mountain climbing expedition I had ever undertaken, and I have to agree that it is the epitome of the Colorado 14er climbing experience.
Note: Here is an excellent website with much useful information for planning a trip to Chicago Basin:
