SAYRES BENCHMARK
(13,738')July 25, 2009
By Tim Briese
11.0 miles, 3900' elevation gain, 7:35 roundtrip time
Brian and I had planned to attempt a long and epic dayhike of Clark Peak today but after our grueling climb of Lightning Pyramid the day before we decided instead to go after an easier peak. Sayres Benchmark seemed like the perfect choice.
The evening before the climb we drove up the South Fork Lake Creek Road off of Highway 82 as far as Brian=s car could make it and camped in my truck in a meadow beside the road. The next morning we drove a little further up the road in my truck and turned left at a signed junction toward Sayres Gulch. After 0.1 mile we reached the end of the road and parked at the trailhead. At 6:25 we left the parking area and immediately crossed over South Fork Lake Creek on a nice bridge that was wide enough to accommodate ATV=s but not motor vehicles. We followed the trail on the other side for 125 yards until we reached an intersection where we turned left onto an old road. We thought we were now on the old mining road that would take us to the heights above, according to the route description in Garratt and Martin=s book. The road we were on, however, was the Sayres Gulch Road that follows the drainage to the south. Had we looked to the left after going 100 yards south on this road, as we discovered later, we would have seen a green metal gate back in the woods and the more faint road that we were looking for. That road crosses the creek in Sayres Gulch and then climbs the ridge to the southeast. As it was, we continued south on the Sayres Gulch Road for about half a mile as I began to suspect that we were off route. We looked at a map Brian had on his GPS and it showed the mining road we wanted climbing the ridge over on the east side of the gulch. We had no idea how we had missed it but decided to bushwhack across the gulch and traverse through the woods to the northeast to attempt to find it. In relatively short order we made our way through the trees over to the correct road and we were on our way.
This remarkable old mining road was relatively smooth and gentle and provided a pleasant route to reach the distant heights. We got on the road at about 10,800 feet and followed it up to 13,000 feet. There was a junction at 12,000 feet where we went to the right and another at 12,600 feet where we went to the left. At this point we were far above timberline and could easily see Sayres off to the southeast. At 13,000 feet we left the road and climbed up to the crest of the ridge a short distance above to the east. We traversed to the south along the top of a colorful red scree slope and continued south over a 13,200 foot point before descending to a 13,020 saddle on Sayres= northwest ridge. From the saddle it was a relatively simple climb mostly on grass up to a false summit and then a short walk east to the true summit.
We arrived on top at 10:45 and spent about 20 minutes there. We could see quite a few climbers about a half mile away over on the popular trail from Winfield up to La Plata Peak. I looked down at the gnarly northeast ridge of Sayres which can be accessed from that trail and concluded that I was glad we had not tried to come up that way. I took a look at the namesake benchmark on the summit and noticed with surprise that it was off by a thousand feet of elevation.
Clouds were building rapidly so we presently took leave of the summit. For the sake of variety we tried a slightly different descent route. From the saddle we dropped 600 feet down to the west on very steep grass and scree to an old road which took us back to the 12,600 foot junction, via the right fork we had not taken on the way up. This worked okay as a descent route but I think our ascent route was the better way to go up.
We uneventfully tramped back down the road all the way to Sayres Gulch, where we discovered the green metal gate we had missed in the morning. Sprinkles were falling from the sky when we returned to my truck at 2 p.m. We drove back to Brian=s car and then sat on the tailgate of my truck for a while enjoying ice cold Cokes before I left for home.
