August 25, 2024

By Tim Briese

Radial Mountain: 5.3 miles, 1700’ elevation gain, 4:35 roundtrip time

Brian and I returned to Willow Creek Pass the next morning and parked just south of the pass at a parking area on the east side of the highway.

a nice view from the pass of parkview mountain, which we climbed the day before

We headed east into the woods on the nice Continental Divide Trail and followed it up the west ridge of Radial until the trail left the ridge and turned to the southeast. We continued up the ridge fighting a lot of deadfall, mostly bushwhacking on one side of the ridge or the other or sometimes right on the crest, welcoming a faint trail here and there. Radial has interesting volcanic dykes radiating away from its summit, including one on the crest of the ridge we were hiking.

the dyke on the ridge

The trees had been heavily burned on the south side of the ridge by the East Troublesome fire a few years ago, but not on the north side.

view of the summit ahead and the burned trees on the right side of the ridge

Eventually we reached the end of the burned area and downed timber and hiked the rest of the way up to the summit on easier open slopes. The summit was a semi-open area in the woods and it was a pleasant place to be on this sunny morning.

me on the summit of radial (photo by brian schultz)

a view from the summit

a view of parkview mountain from near the summit

view of north park

hiking back down along the dyke (photo by brian schultz)

As we were hiking back down we noticed a dark squall line rapidly approaching from the west so we hiked with some urgency.  Nevertheless, part way down we found ourselves engulfed in wind and heavy rain but fortunately we were done crawling over the deadfall by then and were back on the nice trail.

Sunny skies returned as we drove to Hot Sulphur Springs and headed northwest up some back roads in pursuit of Mt. Bross, not to be confused with its more famous 14er namesake near Fairplay.

the town of hot sulphur springs, at the right, and the summit plateau of mt. bross, at the left

Brian navigated as we drove up some sketchy BLM roads all the way to the flat summit.

on the apparent summit of mt. bross

Another dark squall line was rapidly approaching so we hurriedly drove back down onto better roads before it arrived.