CINNAMON MOUNTAIN (13,328’)

July 14, 2015

By Tim Briese

3.7 miles, 1400’ elevation gain, 3:40 roundtrip time

The weather forecast did not look good today so a short easy climb was in order. Brian and I left Ridgway at 540 am and drove through Silverton and headed for Cinnamon Pass. I had not been on the 4WD road up to the pass in many years and it was quite a bit rougher in a couple of spots than I remembered. We arrived at the 12,640 foot pass a little before 730 and parked there. Cinnamon Mountain was visible about half a mile to the southwest. This high start would make for a short climb today.

view of cinnamon mountain from cinnamon pass

We met a friendly couple at the trailhead, Jim Jensen and Mary Hull, who were preparing to climb the same peaks that we were. They took off about five minutes before us. At 7:40 we embarked on a nice trail that climbed southwest from the pass in the general direction of Cinnamon Mountain. Heavy clouds that looked unstable to me hung in the air this morning so it was a good thing this was going to be a short day. There was a steep and rather nasty looking talus slope we needed to ascend to get up to the ridge near Cinnamon, so it was nice to have the good trail that made an ascending traverse across the slope and neatly took us up to the saddle on the ridge.

jim and mary are visible below the snow on the trail that ascends up to the ridge

view from the ridge looking back down at cinnamon pass, in the center of the photo

From the saddle it took only a few minutes to ascend the easy slope up to the summit.

the slope up to cinnamon mountain

We arrived on top just before 8:20, for an ascent time of only 40 minutes from the truck. After a 12 minute stay on top we headed cross country to the southeast across easy terrain toward what appeared to be Un 13535 about three quarters of a mile away.

view from cinnamon mountain of our route toward Un 13,535.  the high point visible on the ridge is actually a false summit of Un 13535.

looking back at cinnamon mountain shortly after we left it

We arrived on Un 13535's north ridge 45 minutes later and found Jim and Mary sitting there on what they thought was the summit. However upon consulting our maps and GPS we determined that the true summit was about a half mile to the south at the end of a long curving ridge. Jim and Mary promptly took off and headed for the true summit and we followed a few minutes later after a short break.

on the ridge toward un 13535, whose summit is at the far left

approaching the summit

It took only 20 minutes or so to hike the ridge to the summit and we got there about 945.

a nice view of jones mountain and niagara peak from the summit

handies peak was directly across the valley to the east.  redcloud and sunshine are visible in the distance to the left.

We took a nice leisurely break on top for over half an hour and had a pleasant visit with Jim and Mary. Clouds were building so we departed and made good time hiking back along the ridge and back to the truck, where we arrived about 11:20, concluding our climbing day. Brian inadvertently left his trekking poles outside the truck when we left but a nice ATV rider spotted them and overtook us a mile or so down the road and delivered them to us. By this hour numerous jeeps and ATV’s were going up and down this popular backcountry road. Rain soon started falling from the dark sky and continued all the way to Silverton, where we stopped for an excellent lunch at Handlebars.