RIO GRANDE PYRAMID
13,821 ft.
July 15, 2004
By Tim Briese
Rio Grande Pyramid stands in stately isolation deep in the heart of the Weminuche Wilderness. It rises high above the surrounding terrain and can be seen from long distances away. I had frequently taken note of its high, pointed summit while I was on other San Juan summits, and even from faraway summits in the Sawatch Range, and I looked forward to the day when I would have the chance to climb it.
I drove to Creede on Wednesday afternoon and met Brian at the Bear=s Den Restaurant where we had dinner. He had just completed a climb of Phoenix Peak that afternoon. After dinner we drove west out of town to the Thirty Mile Campground below the Rio Grande Reservoir dam. We pulled into the large trailhead parking area at the north edge of the campground where we car camped that night. While Brian cleaned up and prepared his gear I walked to the trailhead a hundred yards to the south and hiked a half mile up the Weminuche Trail to scout it for our hike in the morning. We planned to start in the dark, so I wanted to acquaint myself with the beginning of our route in order to avoid any routefinding problems in the morning. I knew well that multiple trails in the vicinity of trailheads can be confusing in the dark.
Rio Grande Pyramid requires a grueling roundtrip hike of nearly 20 miles, so many people choose to climb it with a backpack. Brian and I were determined to dayhike the peak, though, and knew that a very early start would be necessary to reach the summit by late morning in order to avoid the threat of thunderstorms.
After a brief night of sleep we rose in the dark and hit the trail at 3:30 a.m. with our headlamps. Following Roach= s excellent directions, we followed the Weminuche Trail west along the south side of the Rio Grande Reservoir and then south up the Weminuche Creek drainage. The fine trail carried us up the valley through groves of aspen trees and across broad meadows, but we saw very little of the scenery in the darkness. We clipped along rapidly on the trail=s easy grades.
After about five miles we reached a third creek crossing that Roach mentions and began to look for a turnoff to the right onto the Opal Lake Trail. The time was about 5:40 a.m., and it was just beginning to get light, which was fortunate because this crucial turnoff turned out to be hard to find. Roach says the turnoff is about 100 yards past the creek crossing, and we indeed found an old trail marker and a trail to the right at about that point, but after following it for nearly a half mile I began to sense that we were going the wrong way, because we were not yet climbing up a ridge as Roach and our topo map indicated. We retraced our steps back to the creek crossing and after looking around for a few minutes found another faint trail that left the main trail and went uphill to the right. This one was about 100 feet, rather than 100 yards, past the creek crossing, though, and we wondered if Roach=s book did not have a typo! This trail was tricky to find, for although it was marked with a weathered old post, with the difficult-to-read word A Skyline@ carved into it, a clearly defined trail was not evident until we hiked about 50 yards west of the main trail across grass. This trail would have been very difficult to find in the dark!
We were confident now that we were on the right route, and we hiked up this trail as it climbed briskly a thousand feet up a rounded ridge to a flat shoulder at 11,700 feet, where we obtained our first glimpse of Rio Grande Pyramid a couple of miles to the west. We continued west a mile and a half on the trail as it contoured along a slope high above the Rincon La Vaca to the south. The Pyramid grew steadily closer and we could preview our route up its steep slopes. The Window, a square gap in the ridge a half mile south of the Pyramid, was a striking and unique feature that caught our eye, too. We spotted a group of backpackers hiking up another trail in the valley far below, perhaps bound for some remote destination deep in the wilderness. We saw no one else on our climb all day.
We gradually climbed above treeline and hiked on the trail through a bushy area to 12,200 feet, where we turned sharply to the right and headed up a steep trail through talus and scree up to the 12,650 foot saddle northeast of the Pyramid. Clouds were now rapidly building in the sky, so we picked up our pace and urgently hiked a third of a mile across a gentle grassy area to the base of the summit pyramid. We had hiked over nine miles to reach this point, and were now finally ready to engage the mountain itself!
There was an obvious route up a scree slope that we ascended on rather loose footing and soon reached a shoulder at 13,100 feet. We stopped here for a short break and sat on some talus blocks and gazed at the summit above. Brian pulled out his notebook log to jot down some notes and unfortunately left it lying on a rock when we left. We proceeded to climb up the steep slopes above on loose talus blocks, staying generally to the left of some rugged sections. The unstable talus was potentially dangerous so we proceeded with caution. This 600 foot ascent, while only Class 2 or 2+, is the crux of the entire climb.
At 10:18 we stepped on the summit, almost seven hours after we had left the trailhead. We were greeted by fine views all around from this marvelous vantage point. Rio Grande Pyramid is by far the highest point for many miles around, and its great prominence affords commanding views in all directions. Particularly striking were the jagged Needles and Grenadiers off to the west, as well as Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn to the north. We cast frequent glances at the sky, too, because dark and threatening clouds were rapidly building in several directions. This lofty and isolated summit would be a poor place to be in a thunderstorm! We had no desire to descend the steep talus slope on wet rock, either, so we presently left and began our descent at 10:45.
The talus slope was easier to descend than I thought it would be, and we made rapid progress going down on it, while still exercising caution because of numerous wobbly blocks. We stopped at the shoulder to look for Brian=s notebook but it had apparently already become a marmot souvenir. We quickly scooted back down the scree gully to the saddle and descended back down to the trail in the bushes below. Thunder rumbled in several directions, and a particularly dark cloud approached from the southwest, so it felt good to be near the safety of the trees. A drenching seemed likely at this point, but the weather remarkably began to improve and we were treated to sunshine on much of the hike out.
By the time we returned to the Weminuche Trail it seemed as though we had already completed a very long hike, but we still had five miles to go! It was nice to see the lush Weminuche Creek Valley that we had hiked up in the dark, as well as the Rio Grande Reservoir a few miles later. At 3:35 we finally staggered back to the trailhead, completing this marathon hike in just over 12 hours. We hiked about 21 miles on this climb, including the false route we had taken after the stream crossing in the morning, and climbed about 4500 feet of elevation gain. After packing up we left to begin the long drive to Telluride that evening, in anticipation of our attempt to climb Gladstone Peak the next day.
