La Plata Peak

Route: Ellingwood Ridge
Posted On: 8/5/2018, By: supranihilest
Info: The trail through the forest between the turnoff from the main La Plata trail to treeline/the large talus slope on the ridge is largely non-existent and requires a good amount of bushwhacking. Have GPS handy if possible, otherwise the best advice I can give is that you will make a third creek crossing (the first two are on the main La Plata trail) and then head almost directly up a steep, narrow ridge to treeline where you should pop out at the talus slope. This talus slope is loose and seems to go on forever, a great preview of the entire rest of the route - loose and endless! The first half of the ridge is easy to the top of Point 13,138. At this point route finding becomes a significant issue and if your route finding skills are off you can and will find yourself in difficult, exposed terrain, often ending in a sizable cliff. There is quite a bit of loose rock intermixed with the solid stuff though it's generally pretty good where you need it to be. Nonetheless, test every hold. We did not find the route description or photos to be adequate for this section and spent a lot of time meandering about in the endless cliffs and dead ends higher on the ridge. Ultimately we descended a few hundred feet down a grassy gully below a major notch between two large towers, one of a number of such gullies. All the gullies had foot trails in them that met up and traversed below the ridge proper. This lines up with the Roach book's route description ("loss of hard earned elevation") and these grassy gullies are NOT mentioned in the route description on this site! They eventually lead to an obvious gully with a steep, loose trail which you climb up as crossing the next set of rock ribs seemed improbable, if not impossible at a reasonable difficulty. A second gully crossing leads to what I felt was the route's technical crux, a set of steep chimneys with a couple of class 4 options. Beyond this the technical and route finding difficulty relented but you are again confronted by seemingly endless loose talus, rock ribs, and false summits. Keep chugging along, you're almost there! Do not underestimate the length of this route! Be aware of weather (you can escape east (left) down the basin, but away from your car). Bring more food than you think you'll need. Bring more water than you think you'll need. 

Route: Southwest Ridge
Posted On: 8/1/2018, By: mrvwbug
Info: The road to the trailhead is passable in an Outback/crossover. Trail is in great shape, the fist big ridge climb is fine going up, REALLY sketchy coming down (you like scree skiing right?). The big boulder field between 12,800 and 14,000ft can be a little tough to route find, there is a route towards the center-ish of the ridge (as mentioned in the route info), the rest of the climb past this big boulder field is all rock hopping, but is pretty straight forward (BTW there are routes that mostly bypass the 2 false summit "humps" on the climbers left while ascending and climbers right while descending). To the previous reporter, sorry didn't find a GPS up there. 

Route: Southwest Ridge
Posted On: 7/30/2018, By: awpalmer27
Info: Road from Winfield to trailhead was easy 4wd. Standard SUV clearance is adequate. I thought this was a great route. If you hate boulder hopping, however, you probably won't. From about 13,200 to 14,000 you've got a faint trail and you're either ascending or descending a talus slope. ** I lost a grey Garmin GPS MAP64ST at roughly 13,500 feet on the route. If found, please message me. I'll pay $$ for safe return ** 

Route: Ellingwood Ridge
Posted On: 7/11/2018, By: Flyingfish
Info: Loved this route. The "trail" through the trees to the base of Ellingwood was essentially nonexistent. The GPS pulled us through to the base of the massive talus slope. The traverse to the start up "East La Plata" was solid but hard climbing. We stuck to the ridge crest as much as possible to avoid losing elevation but about halfway across you have to navigate some gullies to avoid class 5 terrain high on the ridge. The route up the buttress on "East La Plata" is solid but the exits is tricky and goes as high class 4 with crappy footholds. Go get the route its fun, challenging, and a good thinker. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 7/9/2018, By: jmcgirr47
Info: Great hike.. was very hot above tree line (and below treeline on way down!). Some snow above 13,000. No issues. Long day, 7am - 4pm. Not bad for flatlanders. 

Route: Southwest Ridge
Posted On: 6/22/2018, By: ClimberSkierDave64
Info: We started at 9:30 a few hundred yards from the registration box using a Jeep Compass and we had no problem getting to right below the last block or two. It took us eight hours Round-Trip. Be cautious heading down the first hill to the saddle at 12,800 ft as there is a lot of scree which is very steep and the trail is eroded. It is mainly summer conditions except for a bit of snow towards the top. I would recommend a 4WD even though we did see a CRV get up the road which was surprising as there was a steep rock obstacle that would have been hard without 4WD. Note: On the 3rd false summit humpp on the summit ridge, go around it on the right as going over it gets you in more snow and is not worth it. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 6/17/2018, By: Jeeves042
Info: Not a lot of change since the last report, other than the snow below the ridge no longer covers the trail. Other than the avoidable snow above the ridge, it's in summer conditions. Be ready for a day full of stairs and switchbacks! 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 6/8/2018, By: emily_m
Info: As others have said, there is only a little bit of snow left, almost all of which is avoidable. There was maybe 80-100 horizontal feet total that was covering the trail above treeline before gaining the ridge. I walked on top of in the morning, then kind of slid down some little sections to avoid stepping on alpine veg or post-holing after it had been warmed by the late morning sun. The snow fields along the ridge are easily avoidable by staying to the right on the way up; there are cairns to follow in that direction. I saw no reason to bring any kind of traction. It seemed like some walked straight up the snow in the morning too, as the snow was pretty sticky. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 6/3/2018, By: Thrlskr
Info: Perfect conditions. Still snow near the top, though I used and prefer traction, others in my party did not. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 6/5/2018, By: waitingforanairplane
Info: There's only one short snowfield (maybe 2?) to cross until you reach the big boulder at 12,300', and then intermittent snowfields beyond that. Most of them were only about 30 feet or so and were quick and simple to cross, although were obviously much slushier by the afternoon. Once you gain the ridge, there's quite a bit more snow, but if you stay right, the snow is almost completely avoidable. Seemed like half the people were ascending straight up the ridge through the snow, and half took the route to the right by scrambling up the boulders. Traction may have been helpful, but we didn't use any and were fine without it. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 5/31/2018, By: bandrewcampson
Info: Borderline summer conditions. Patches of snow mainly once you gain the ridge. You can avoid 90% of it by just scrambling on the rocks to the right. A little postholey on the way down through the snow sections, but only for a combined total or around 100ish horizontal feet. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 5/25/2018, By: BillMiddlebrook
Info: The trail is mostly snow-free with the exception of the following areas: 1) A small section on the steep switchbacks, at 11,750'. 2) A larger patch from 12,500'-12,600' covering the trail before it reaches the northwest ridge. 3) Along the upper ridge where the trail is sometimes covered as it zigzags along the ridge, between 13,700' and 14,200'. 

Route: North Face
Posted On: 5/25/2018, By: BillMiddlebrook
Info: After hiking the standard route, we skied the main line down the north face. It was in from the summit and continuous to 12,200', so approx. 2,200' of skiing. Getting out of La Plata Basin is a bit of a challenge now because snow has melted out in sections between 12,200' and 11,700'. As we exited toward the crossover area, near the winter-variation headwall, we had to take the skis off a couple of times but were able to use them to ski within a 1/4 of the crossover area, where we transitioned to hiking shoes and walked over talus to reach the headwall area, near 11,800'. From there we bushwacked northwest to rejoin the standard trail near 10,600'. So, it's a lot of work to get out of the basin now but the skiing is still very good. I suppose you could ski the north face down to 12,000' and skin/boot southwest back up to regain the northwest ridge, near 12,750', but that might mean doing it with soft snow. The last image is a map of our route where yellow=hiking and red=skiing. 

Route: Northwest Ridge
Posted On: 5/14/2018, By: BillMiddlebrook
Info: Above 11,000', the trail has many sections of hard-pack snow so take your microspikes, at least. Snowshoes not necessary. Once on the northwest ridge, crampons are helpful to the summit but if you only have microspikes, you could bypass the steep snow sections by hiking through the rocks. 

Route: North Face
Posted On: 5/14/2018, By: BillMiddlebrook
Info: We hiked the northwest ridge and skied the north face. Plenty of snow on the face, both in the main line off the summit and lines that drop high off the northwest ridge. After skiing the face, we skied all the way down to 11,850 to reach the forest near the winter-variation headwall. From there, we booted back to the summer trail. There was some post-holing between the headwall and approx. 11,400' in the forest but also a lot of dry ground.