DRIFT PEAK
13,900 ft.
September 9, 2004
By Tim Briese
Drift Peak is a lofty 13er in the Tenmile Range on a ridge southwest of Fletcher Mountain. It has a so-called "soft@ ranking, meaning that accurate data does not exist to determine whether it should be classified as an official peak or not. By convention, a Colorado peak must rise at least 300 feet above connecting saddles with adjacent higher peaks to be official. Topo maps show that Drift is close to meeting this requirement, but may or may not do so. Drift would qualify as an official Centennial 13er if it meets this requirement. I intended to take some GPS elevation measurements on this climb in order to shed some light on this question.
I left home at 5 a.m. with my two labs and drove to the Blue Lake Trailhead northwest of Hoosier Pass. I parked in the large parking area below the north end of the dam at the Blue Lake Reservoir. Only one other vehicle was parked there. My plan was to hike up the drainage northwest of the reservoir toward Fletcher Mountain (13,951'), and then climb to the Fletcher/Drift saddle and then Drift to obtain elevation measurements at each place. At 7:15 I struck off in the golden morning sunlight up the trail over the north end of the dam and started hiking along its northern shore. A hundred yards from the dam I took a cairned fork in the trail that led steeply uphill to the right. I became a bit confused by multiple trails, so after climbing 300 feet or so I simply began to bushwhack toward the northwest on talus until I reached a good trail that goes up the drainage toward Fletcher. The rough southwest slopes of Quandary Peak lay above me to the right. I followed this general route in December of 2002 when I climbed Fletcher, and it was nice to come back now and see what this place looked like without a mantle of snow.
I continued up the valley on the good trail, noticing frost on the grass along the way. At 12,400 feet the trail took me deftly up a steep talus slope, but then it faded out in the gentler terrain above. From this point on I found only a few scattered cairns to guide me. I climbed up talus slopes at the northwest end of the valley and reached a broad flat area below Fletcher at 13,200 feet. From here I had a great view of Fletcher, Drift, and the connecting saddle between them, which was my first goal.
I rapidly strode a third of a mile across the flat, easy terrain and then angled up on talus to the Fletcher/Drift saddle. Quandary Peak struck a fine pose off to the east from this vantage point. I immediately got down to the business of obtaining an elevation measurement, carefully picking out the lowest point on the saddle and placing my GPS on the ground there. After letting it calibrate for two minutes I began to take readings. I wanted to take readings over a period of time because of the tendency of GPS elevation readings to fluctuate a little bit over time. At 9:23 the GPS read 13,632 feet, and at 9:33 it read 13,636 feet. During the intervening ten minutes I meticulously watched it fluctuate over a narrow range from 13,630 feet to 13,636 feet. I decided to assign a measured value of 13,633 feet to the elevation at the saddle, the midpoint of the value range.
Upon securing this measurement, I was ready to head to the summit of Drift. I glanced up at the gnarly-looking ridge to the summit, with its cliffs, towers, and rugged false summits, and briefly considered attempting it, but thought better of that idea. Instead I thought it wiser to follow Roach=s suggested route when approaching the peak from the east. I went down a scree slope back to the flat basin below and hiked a hundred yards southwest to a minor saddle between Drift and Point 13,515. Following the directions for Roach=s AEast Couloir@ route, I descended southwest from that saddle and contoured under the southeast face of Drift. The rugged slopes above looked rather intimidating. Roach says to climb an east-facing couloir to 13,580 feet on Drift=s south ridge, but the couloir that I believe he describes looked too nasty to suit me. Instead, I spied a rubble gully to the right that looked more doable and climbed up into it. The footing was rather loose but I managed to stay on generally solid talus along the left edge of the gully. The gully became very steep and narrow near its upper end, only about six feet wide. It reminded me of the steep gully on Cathedral Peak I had climbed a couple of years before. Rockfall was somewhat of a danger at this point so I proceeded very carefully.
At the top of the gully I reached the crest of Drift=s south ridge at 13,730 feet, and turned to the right and climbed a hundred yards up the rough ridge to the summit, finding slightly easier terrain on the left side of the ridge. I stepped on top at 10:40, and immediately began to take some photos before a cloud moved in front of the sun. I was greeted by fine views of Quandary, Fletcher, the Mt. Lincoln 14er group, and Drift=s rugged south ridge.
I carefully picked out the highest rock on the summit and placed my GPS on it and repeated the procedure I followed at the saddle. I had left my GPS turned on in my pack on the climb from the saddle to the summit. At 10:46 the GPS read 13,923 feet and ten minutes later it said 13,920 feet. During the intervening ten minutes the values ranged from 13,920 feet to 13,927 feet, so I assigned the midpoint of 13,924 feet as the measured value. The measured difference, then, between the summit and the saddle was 291 feet, leaving Drift just a few feet short of official status as a ranked peak. Although my elevation readings may be slightly inaccurate on an absolute basis, I believe that the measured elevation difference should be quite accurate, because the readings were taken with the same instrument only a short time and distance apart, with values fluctuating over a very small range during the periods of observation. These observations do not conclusively prove that Drift is not a ranked peak, of course, but may be considered as good evidence to support this conclusion. It would be interesting to see what results others might attain.
A dark cloud was rapidly forming overhead so I did not tarry long and left the summit at 11. I carefully guided my dogs back down the steep rubble gully so that none of us would be hit by any rocks we dislodged. For the sake of exploration and adventure I decided to return to the trailhead on a different route than the one I came up and went down the Monte Cristo Creek drainage southeast of the peak. Roach describes this route as a Arough, direct approach.@ I worked my way across talus a half mile down to a small lake at 12,850 feet before the going got a little easier. To my surprise, I came across two large piles of old camping gear deteriorating near the lake, including a cooler, a radio, and a 20 pound propane bottle, among numerous other items! An old newspaper in one of the piles was printed in May of 2000, so the mysterious abandoned expedition must have occurred at some point after that, perhaps during the summer of 2000. A sign painted on a rock nearby said ACMC 250 421@. I wondered who had brought all this stuff up here, and why they left it. It created an ugly manmade scar in an otherwise beautiful mountain valley.
The gentle valley curved to the left below the lake and I hiked about a mile down grassy slopes before Blue Lake Reservoir came into view. I was able to pick out a pleasant route across meadows and around willows all the way down to the reservoir. I hiked along the north shore of the half-mile long reservoir back toward the dam, on block-like talus at first, before finding a reasonable trail along the shore when I got closer to the trailhead. The valley I had come down above the reservoir glowed colorfully in the September sunshine. At 1:20 I returned to my truck, completing the hike in about six hours. I hiked about 6 miles and climbed 2600 feet of elevation gain on this fine loop hike. Drift Peak may not be an official mountain according to our arbitrary human definition, but it is a fine peak to climb nonetheless.
