TORREYS PEAK
14,267 ft.
August 19, 1997
By Tim Briese
Torreys Peak is generally climbed in combination with Grays Peak from the immensely popular Stevens Gulch Trailhead to the east. I climbed Grays from that approach two years before, but my climbing partner, my seven year old daughter Emily, did not have the stamina to continue on to Torreys. I was not eager to return now and jostle with the crowds on the Stevens Gulch Trail, but instead selected an entirely different approach to Torreys, the scenic and seldom-climbed Chihuahua Gulch route from the southwest.
My daughter Nicole and I drove out the afternoon before and four-wheeled up the very rough Chihuahua Gulch jeep road about a mile and set up camp at 11,000 feet in a broad meadow near some ponds and a stream. It was quite a scenic spot, with the pointed summit of Torreys towering above about two miles to the northeast, and Grizzly Peak (13,427 ft.) at the head of the valley to the northwest. It was quite remote, too, for we didn’t see anyone else that evening or the next morning. We cooked our dinner over a roaring fire at dusk and later admired the moonlight shining on the ridge high above to the west.
We awoke at dawn to a frosty morning under a partly cloudy sky. At about 7:00 we left camp with our lab Sadie and began hiking up the valley to the north. We could have walked up the old jeep road for a ways but preferred instead to bushwhack across the meadows and through intermittent stands of bushes just for the sake of adventure. After about a mile we crossed a stream at 11,500 feet and began to ascend Torrey’s rounded southwest ridge. It was a steep bushwhack up slopes of grass and then rocks as we got higher, with generally good footing. There was a very faint trail in places, but it was obvious that this route does not see many feet. We stopped for frequent rests to catch our breath on the vigorous 2800 foot ascent out of the valley. Eventually the slope of the ridge began to ease a little and we hiked a short distance further to the summit, where we arrived a little after 11:00.
We were greeted by grand views all around, especially of Grays Peak beyond the saddle to the south. Far off to the west I could pick out Holy Cross at the northern end of the Sawatch Range. The sky was mostly cloudy now, with a few rain showers far in the distance, but threatening weather was not imminent. There were about a half dozen other climbers on the summit who had apparently come up the standard route from the east, with more on the way coming across the saddle. Nicole sat nearby with her arm around Sadie, enjoying the sublime views of the surrounding mountains and the lakes in the valley far below.
After relaxing on top for nearly an hour we began our descent around noon. Instead of going back down the ridge we had come up, we headed off to the south to get onto an immense scree slope that lies below the saddle between Grays and Torreys. I knew that this was an environmentally insensitive route, but we had had so much fun on the scree on Mt. Bross the year before that we couldn’t resist the temptation to slide down on it again. We rapidly descended a thousand feet or more on the scree and then worked our way down a rough gully below. As we got lower we bushwhacked down across pleasant grassy slopes with pretty wildflowers that shimmered in the sunlight that was now breaking through the clouds. Nicole impulsively removed her shoes to feel the pleasure of walking through the soft grass with her bare feet for a short distance. The cares of the world can simply melt away in the majesty of the mountains.
When we neared the floor of the valley we had to push our way through some bushy willows, but we didn’t mind, for this was just part of the adventure. We returned to the truck about 2 p.m. and packed up camp. As we four-wheeled out we met four hikers walking up the rough old road, the first trace of humanity we had seen in the valley. It had been a fun wilderness adventure for us, and it was made especially so by the bushwhacking and by the solitude we had found.
