GRIZZLY PEAK C
(13,700')July 19-20, 2010
By Tim Briese
32.8 miles, 6700' elevation gain
I looked forward to this climb all year because it promised an adventure into a part of the Wemicuche Wilderness I had never visited before. We planned to backpack up the Vallecito Trail and climb the peak the next day from a camp near the junction of the Vallecito/Johnson Creek Trails. This route requires many miles of hiking but most of the miles are easy hiking on a relatively gentle trail, and the backpack portion of the climb does not require much elevation gain. We could have climbed this peak via an approach from Needleton and hiked fewer miles, but the time and effort required would not necessarily have been any less.
I met Brian in Bayfield a little after noon and we drove to the Vallecito Trailhead. The popular trailhead was jammed with vehicles and we were barely able to find spots to park. At 1:20 p.m. we donned our backpacks and headed up the Vallecito Trail in the afternoon heat. We met a number of casual hikers on the first miles of the trail but their numbers gradually waned the further we went. We crossed the Vallecito twice on nice bridges and then about six miles up the trail found it necessary to ford the broad creek at a place where a former bridge had washed out but this was no problem.
A little after 6 p.m. we finally reached the Johnson Creek trail junction, where we had planned to camp for the night. At this point we had hiked about 8.3 miles and climbed 1200 feet of elevation gain. The weather was excellent and we felt strong so we decided to head up the Johnson Creek Trail a ways to get a little closer to Grizzly. We crossed the Vallecito on a nice bridge where some young people were jumping off a rock into the cold water. The trail then looped through a meadow for a ways before crossing Johnson Creek, where we met a solitary young female backpacker with her dog. We hiked another mile or so up the trail until 7:30 and set up camp on a reasonably flat area at 9700 feet, having backpacked about 9.5 miles today.
We rose at 3:15 the next morning and left camp at 3:45 and headed up the excellent Johnson Creek Trail with our headlamps. Later on the sun was just beginning to shine on the higher terrain when we neared Columbine Pass, about five miles from camp. Just below the pass we found a fainter trail that headed off to the right toward another pass north of Hope Mountain, about a mile away. We followed this trail over to the 12,700 foot pass, where we arrived at 7:30 and took a welcome 15 minute break. From this vantage point we could see Grizzly and Hazel Lake below, and most importantly, the ramp on Grizzly= s northwest slopes that was the key to the climbing route.
We descended 250' from the pass on a steep, crude trail and circled around the north side of Hazel Lake. We began climbing up the slopes toward the ramp on grass and then talus. The steep ramp was no less than ten feet wide and offered convenient passage to the heights above. Above the ramp a plethora of crude climbers trails offered little guidance about where to go so we simply climbed up to the top of the ridge at the left, where we were treated to a view of the rest of the route to the summit. After some deliberation we found a Class 4 route to get across a notch to gain access to Grizzly= s north slopes. We could have avoided this by not climbing to the ridge so soon and staying down lower on the approach to the notch. From the notch we followed a nicely cairned route across the north face of the peak and then up to the summit. The route featured quite a bit of fun Class 3 scrambling.
We stepped on the rocky summit a few minutes after 10 a.m. Fine views were afforded all around, including views of the Chicago Basin peaks and the Vallecito drainage. The summit register showed that four climbers had preceded us here this year. Clouds were building so we left the top at 10:20 and headed down. The peak has a second, lower summit at a balanced rock about 25 yards northeast of the main summit, and Brian scrambled over to inspect it.
The descent to Hazel Lake went smoothly but the climb back up to the Hope saddle was a bit grueling after all we had done in the last 24 hours. The day= s first rumble of thunder soon filled the air. When we neared Columbine Pass I hiked up to it to have a look down into Chicago Basin on the other side while Brian headed down the trail to Columbine Lake to begin filtering water. We trudged back down to camp in intermittent thundershowers and arrived there at about 3:50. We hiked about 13.8 miles roundtrip from camp and climbed 4500' of elevation gain on the 12 hour climb today.
Anyone in their right mind would have stayed at camp another night after such an undertaking, but not us. Neither of us had any desire to lay in a rainy camp all night, and also I had carelessly indicated to my wife that she would probably hear from me that evening, so we packed up and off we went at 4:35 p.m. The skies soon broke loose in a violent thunderstorm which lasted for the next couple of hours as we hiked out. Streams quickly rose with runoff, and Johnson Creek and later a tributary of the Vallecito required very careful fording. The trail out seemed endless and we found it necessary to put our headlamps back on for the second time today on the final hour of the hike! We finally tramped back to the trailhead at 9:40 p.m., completely and thoroughly spent. We ended up hiking 23.3 miles in nearly 18 hours today, a new record for us for the longest time spent hiking in a day, and perhaps also for the least amount of sanity displayed!
We drove to Durango in a driving rainstorm and found a motel for the night. We had a most welcome dinner at 12:30 a.m. at Denny= s, the only restaurant in town still open at this hour!
