HANDIES PEAK, EAST SLOPES ROUTE
14,048 ft.
August 2, 2001
By Tim Briese
I left Lake City at 5:30 a.m. and followed Brian and Jason up the Cinnamon Pass Road to the Grizzly Gulch Trailhead. The sky was clear this morning but a heavy dampness in the air foretold of rainy weather later, with much the same conditions that we encountered on our climb of Wetterhorn the day before.
When we pulled into the trailhead parking area there was a group of about fifteen teenagers noisily moving about preparing for a climb. I was a little dismayed since it appeared that any chance for peace or solitude on our climb had all but evaporated. When we walked across the road to the trailhead we were surprised to see a large fire the group had just ignited on the road with a gas fuel. An apparent ritual was taking place in which each member of the group threw their shoes into the fire, pulled them back out and put them on, and then hot-footed it on up the trail. I had never seen anything like this before!
After watching this curious ceremony for a few moments we left the trailhead at 6:25 and began to hike steeply up the trail into the woods above Grizzly Creek. Presently members of the group ran past us on the trail, carrying only water bottles and light jackets. I thought they would soon tire and we would overtake them and not see them on the rest of the ascent. How wrong I was, though, for they burned on up the trail and never looked back! We learned from other hikers that they were a group of Outward Bound trail runners who dashed on up to Handies’ summit, went down to American Basin on the other side, continued over Cinnamon Pass and then ran on to Eureka. That was astonishing!
When we neared timberline it quickly became apparent that this was a beautiful hike. We were surrounded by vast meadows filled with wildflowers that glowed in shades of yellow, pink, purple, and white. Handies stood majestically up at the head of the valley beyond the flowery meadows, luring us on, as a brook nearby merrily sang its watery tune. A strikingly scenic ridge to the south still held some shimmering ribbons of snow among its rugged ramparts.
When Brian first invited me to join him on this climb of Handies I was only marginally enthusiastic about climbing this gentle peak a second time, although I was interested in exploring this new route I had not been on before. What a beautiful and rewarding climb it turned out to be, though! These were some of the best wildflower displays I had seen on a 14er climb, in a setting of spectacular mountain splendor.
After a short rest in a grassy meadow on the floor of the basin we followed the fine trail as it gently switchbacked toward the heights above, with the beautiful valley we had hiked up now shimmering in the morning sunlight far below. The sky was clear and sunny for a while, just long enough for us to get some nice photos of the wildflowers in the basin, but clouds rapidly built up and threatened to sock in the summit before we got there. We gained Handies north ridge at about 13,500 feet and made a steep grind up the ridge to the south and then strolled the final 100 yards along a gentle grade to the summit, where we arrived about 9:30.
There were about a half dozen other climbers on top, some of whom had come up from Grizzly Gulch and some from American Basin. One young man who reached the summit shocked us with a request for a lighter to strike up a cigarette, a request we were not able, or perhaps even willing, to accommodate. Smoking a cigarette seemed to me a very incongruous way to celebrate the sublimity of a mountaintop experience! I never cease to be amazed by the vagaries of human nature.
We soon donned our jackets as a light breeze rapidly cooled us off. My thermometer reported that the temperature was a brisk 48 degrees. A dense cloud ceiling hovered just above us and the views of the surrounding mountains were limited to some extent. As time went on, though, the clouds broke a little, and magnificent views of mountains all around were revealed. The views from Handies are indeed spectacular, rivaling the best from any 14er, with rugged mountain wilderness as far as the eye can see in every direction. To the north were Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre, and to the east were Redcloud and Sunshine, with the Grizzly Creek Valley below that we had just come up. Around to the south were the high 13ers Half Peak, Jones Peak, and Niagara Peak, with beautiful Sloan Lake lying at the upper end of American Basin below to the southwest. The scene that fascinated me most, though, was the distant view of the Needle Mountains and the Grenadier Range lying far off to the southwest on the horizon. Pigeon, Arrow, and Vestal Peaks all thrust their pointed summits into the sky, and beckoned me to come and climb them someday.
After about an hour I gathered myself from my mesmerized state of 14er exhilaration and joined my comrades on our descent from the summit. The descent was rapid back down the easy trail. We paused occasionally to inspect the sights around us, including a marmot along the trail who appeared to be curiously observing the numerous hikers walk past, a patch of bright green moss at the edge of the water in the stream, and a hidden lake in a hanging valley off in the distance to the south. I thoroughly enjoyed the stroll back through the wildflowers, too. We were privileged to visit two incredibly beautiful basins in the past two days, Matterhorn Basin the day before and this one today.
When we neared the trees Jason’s knee began to hurt so painfully that he found it difficult to walk. I let him borrow my trekking poles and we slowed down our pace considerably as he winced and hobbled back down to the trailhead. This spelled the end of his climbing for the week.
A little after 1 p.m. we arrived back at the trailhead after completing the eight mile hike. I lounged around for a while before exchanging goodbyes and heading off down the road. As I drove home I thought about how wonderful it had been to hike in the San Juans once again. As much as I enjoy Colorado’s central and eastern mountains that are closer to my home, going from their lofty rounded humps to the jagged summits of the San Juans is like going to another world, with the grandeur increasing by many degrees.
