September 1, 2005

By Tim Briese

I first took note of Deer Mountain when I saw it from the summit of French Mountain on a climb in 2002. Its lofty, pointed summit and rugged eastern face caught my eye, and I immediately put it on my mental list of mountains that I wanted to climb someday.

On the first day of September I drove to the North Fork Lake Creek Trailhead with my two enthusiastic labs, Allie and Jorie. The trailhead lies a few miles east of Independence Pass, right off of Highway 82, adjacent to the hairpin curve where the highway leaves the valley and climbs sharply to the west up to the pass. The morning was crisp and clear, with strong hints of fall already in the air. My thermometer said 28 degrees, and frost coated the surrounding bushes and grass. A frost-coated car was parked at the trailhead, probably belonging to backpackers who had spent the night somewhere out in the wilderness.

At 7:15 I began hiking up a fine trail along the west side of North Fork Lake Creek, presently entering the Mt. Massive Wilderness. I felt strong and energetic this morning, and clipped along at a brisk pace. At about 11,500' the drainage divided and I followed the right branch on a more faint trail northeastward toward Deer. The shadowed hulk of the mountain now lay directly before me. I hiked past a charming lake just before I reached a pass at 12,460'. It took me about two hours to hike four miles up to the pass from the trailhead.

I took a nice break here and gazed down into the upper reaches of the Fryingpan River drainage to the north and at the surrounding summits. I left the trail at the pass and began a steep 1300 foot climb up Deer=s west ridge toward the summit. When I was partway up I heard the drone of an aircraft engine breaking the morning silence and looked down at a small aircraft flying below me up the valley that I had just hiked up. It seemed odd to gaze downward at a flying aircraft. It flew over the pass, circled around, then returned back down the valley and disappeared.

At 10:30 I stepped atop the summit and was greeted by fine views of Mt. Massive and Mt. Oklahoma, as well as Mt. Elbert and numerous other surrounding peaks. The weather was perfect this morning, without a cloud in the sky, and hardly a breath of wind. In planning this outing I had studied an optional return route south along the ridge over Pt. 13,736 and Mt. Champion back to the trailhead, and I looked at that route now to determine its feasibility. The ridge to Pt. 13,736 looked quite rough, but I still felt strong and the weather was cooperating nicely, so I decided to give it a try. As it turned out I got more than I bargained for, because the ridge is harder than it looks. I=m not sure that I would have done it had I known what I was getting into!

A few minutes before 11 I left Deer=s summit and launched forth on the ridge. I immediately encountered large, blocky talus and rough notches. One big notch required a Class 3 downclimb. I had to assist Jorie in a few places because she was intimidated by the big steps in the talus blocks. Allie, however, handled it like a mountain goat.

The most challenging part of the ridge came just after I traversed around the intervening Pt. 13,436. I was trying to get down to a saddle at 13,100' but found the ridge very rough. The right side looked too steep and cliffy to navigate, so I tried to stay right on the crest of the ridge, but after downclimbing over rough talus for a hundred yards or so I was stopped by vertical drops of 10 to 20 feet! There was no reasonable choice other than to drop down on the left side of the ridge, so I made a precarious 500' descent on very steep and loose scree and talus to a basin below. It was disheartening to lose so much precious elevation gain, because I was now 300' below the saddle that I was trying to reach. My hot, thirsty dogs didn=t mind, though, because there was a big snowbank lying in the basin that they used to cool off.

I took a break while the dogs frolicked on the snow, and gazed up at Pt. 13,736 high above directly to the west. I pondered bailing out on the climb, because it would now take a steep 900 foot climb to get up there. After considering other return routes I decided to continue the climb up to Pt. 13,736 after all. The first 700' of the climb was steep but reasonable, on grass or solid rock, but the last 200' was back to the rough talus again, and after a tedious hundred yards of scrambling across big blocks I finally stepped atop the summit at 2 p.m. It took me over three hours to cover the mile and a half from Deer Mountain, far longer than I expected!

From Pt. 13,736 it was another half mile to Mt. Champion. The descent from the Point was a tedious climb over talus again, but once I reached the saddle between the two mountains it was an easy walk up to Champion= s summit. It took about 40 minutes to hike from one peak to the other.

From the summit of Champion I headed southwest down steep slopes of grass and scree toward the valley far below. I passed a couple of interesting old mine structures along the way, and marveled at the iron will of the old-timers who constructed and operated them way up here!

The descent was relentlessly steep, about 2500' of elevation loss in less than a mile. I went down quickly, perhaps too quickly, because a hot, painful spot developed on one of my feet. Fortunately I rarely have this problem. It was quite a pleasure to finally reach the trees in the valley below. I eagerly hiked across a meadow to a creek, and removed my boot and cooled off my foot in the clear, cold water. The dogs were very pleased to be there, as well. Jorie sat nearby in the water and cooled herself off, too. I sat and rested by the creek, listening to the pleasant sound of the water. How wonderful it was to be in the mountains on such a beautiful day!

After relaxing for a while I hiked back down the gentle trail that I had been on in the morning, a quarter of a mile back to my truck, where I arrived at 4:30. I estimated that I hiked about nine miles and climbed 4600 feet of elevation gain in just over nine hours on this outing. Even though I did a rough ridge hike today that I have no desire to repeat, I also explored a new drainage and climbed three of the state=s bicentennial peaks, which made the outing very satisfying and worthwhile.

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