MCCURDY MOUNTAIN
12,168 ft.
June 18, 2003
By Tim Briese
I wanted to go on a long, snow-free climb to finish my conditioning program for Mt. Whitney, and McCurdy, the second highest mountain in the Tarryall Range, seemed like a good choice. The route I planned to take up the Brookside-McCurdy Trail requires about fifteen miles of roundtrip hiking and a little over 4000 feet of elevation gain. I was familiar with most of the route because I had attempted the climb a few years before in the early spring but had found excessive soft snow on the trail that proved to be too much for me.
I drove toward the Twin Eagles Trailhead north of Lake George in the early morning twilight and was startled to see a large black bear running across a meadow about fifty yards from the road. He stopped a moment to look at me before turning and running off into the woods nearby. There was no one else at the trailhead when I arrived, and a few minutes before 6:00 I walked across the fine footbridge over the rain-swollen Tarryall River and struck off up the trail with my two labs.
The morning was damp and cool, and low, misty clouds hung upon the wooded summits above, while scattered wisps of fog silently drifted across the valley below. The rocky slopes of McCurdy loomed above to the northeast. I clipped along briskly through the woods and reached the Hankins Pass Trail junction after about two miles. There are several trail junctions along the route, and even though the route to McCurdy stays entirely on the well-marked Brookside-McCurdy Trail, except for a final half-mile bushwhack to the summit, it is best to have a good map along to avoid confusion.
The next stretch of the trail was rather grueling, as it climbed 1700 feet in under two miles up to a minor pass at 10,740 feet. I took a short break along the way to admire the view back down into the valley below. I strode past a sleeping backpacker lying in a sleeping bag in the woods about fifty feet from the trail. I wondered how he fared in the rain that fell during the night without a tent. Beyond the pass the trail dropped slightly down into a charming valley before turning to the left and climbing on up to timberline. At 11,400 feet the trail leveled off and contoured pleasantly along the southwestern slopes of the mighty McCurdy massif for about a mile and a half, just above treeline. Here I walked across a fascinating landscape, unlike any other I’d seen in Colorado, with pancake-like stacks of reddish rocks surrounded by ghost forests of weather-bleached bristlecone pines.
It was tempting to leave the trail and head up the slopes to the right toward McCurdy too soon, but careful consultation of my topo map and Roachs’ directions (from their guidebook: Colorado’s Lost Creek Wilderness) guided me to patiently stay on the trail and leave it at the best point. The bushwhack toward the summit was pleasant and easy, up grassy tundra slopes on gentle grades. I could not see the actual summit of McCurdy until I almost reached it, and at first I thought a slightly lower 12,164' point to the northwest of the real summit might be my goal. A slight trail appeared in the grass when I approached within a hundred yards of the rocky outcropping that proved to be the summit. I quickly scampered up an easy ramp on its northwest side and at 10:30 a.m. stepped atop the summit.
The view from the summit was quite grand, with a special type of beauty that is unique to this area. I was impressed by the broad expanse of the summit plateau that stretched away around me. The plateau is over a mile long, with vast grassy areas interspersed with interesting rocky outcroppings, at least three of which appeared to be at least 12,100 feet high. I thought that this would be an interesting place to wander about and explore someday. Today was not the day for such explorations, though, for moist clouds were beginning to rise and darken on the wings of convective updrafts brought on by the heat of the midday June sun.
After a half hour of rest and gazing about I left the summit and began my descent. I easily hiked back down the gentle grades across the tundra back down into the trees. Here I encountered the first other hiker I had seen all day, a backpacker on a loop hike through the Lost Creek Wilderness via McCurdy Park. He asked if I had a map he could look at, for he had inadvertently left his lying on a table at home, so I simply gave him the photocopied map pages I had along.
Black clouds piled up in the northeast and I listened for the day’s first rumble of thunder as I hiked along, but surprisingly, it did not come yet. Lower down on the trail I met a few other hikers coming up, bound for various destinations in the wilderness. I stopped for a few minutes and rested beside a pleasant little stream before continuing on down to the trailhead, where I arrived about 2:20 p.m. I finished just in time, too, for just after I drove away thunderstorms popped up all around, and frequent lightning and heavy rain accompanied me all the way home.
