San Juan Weekend

6/26 - V4, US Grant, V2

Started and ended at the Ice lake Trailhead. Standard class 1 trail up to Island Lake. We went around the left side of the lake, and up a grassy slope to reach the V4-US Grant saddle. V4 had a small amount of snow on the back side and finding the right trail up was a little tough. We stayed low which was a mistake and we had to ascend a loose gully which you can see between 2 patches of snow in photo 3. At the top of the gully we angled right and bypassed a large tower on our left (photo 5). At this point we crossed over to the south side of V4 and proceeded up an obvious gully (photo 8). There is a cairn marking the summit. On our way out we found a better route to get back to the saddle, marked in red in photo 3.

US Grant has one Class 4 wall and it's maybe 10ft tall (photos 9 and 10). Immediately after is the class 3 ledge but it's decently wide and feels more like a sidewalk. Much easier route finding than you'd think looking at the mountain from the saddle. From the summit of Grant, we took the east ridge down towards the Grant-V2 saddle. I didn't see much beta on this prior, but read that it goes at Class 2+, which I'd agree with. There was one other report that it was much worse, but that's not what we experienced. I think that person may have taken a worse route. The beginning has the worst quality rock, it's loose and steep. But it gets better. We mostly kept to the south side of the ridge (climber's right). From the saddle, it's a quick hike up to V2 on a very easy to follow trail.

Stats: 11.89mi, 5028ft

6/27 - V8, Beattie, Vermilion, Fuller, Golden Horn

We car shuttled this one, starting at Bandora Mine TH. From the Ice Lake TH, there's a 4x4 recommended sign, but I made it to the TH in a stock RAV4, the road wasn't too difficult. Maybe a 2 or 3 rating using the 14ers dot com scale. High clearance was helpful and there was a very low creek crossing. Up V8 aka UN 13302 was the worst part of the day. Lots of loose talus, loose boulders, loose dirt. Just a trash mountain. It was a good idea to have your other foot out of the way with each step up because it seemed that everything moved. I found 2 sections that had solid footing but those were short lived, maybe 100ft out of the 800ft. If there's a better route, I hope you're able to locate it.

The ridge to Beattie was easy talus and boulder hopping. The initial plan was to possibly add on Pilot Knob, but I couldn't find much info on the traverse from Golden Horn, directly under the face of Pilot Knob, and from afar it looked sketch. So we discussed several bail out points on different saddles, but luckily this also happened to be the same day as the John Cappis 50K, and we saw a good amount of trail runners. We chatted with a photographer on the way to the Vermilion-Fuller saddle and found out runners were going down the northwest face of Fuller. They saved the day by taking out the guess work. I added a mini Wham Ridge looking rock to a cairn near the saddle.

So we went up Vermilion next, easy route finding and excellent views of Golden Horn and Pilot Knob. Fuller was the easiest ascent of the day since the gain was minimal. The descent from Fuller was a mix of scree and smaller talus. And the amount of people that had descended before us made for an easy to follow trail. The first patch of snow is avoidable, but it was nice and punchy so we crossed it. Some runners were glissading it. The second larger snow field was also soft and easy to get through, no spikes necessary.

We then steered towards the Vermilion-Golden Horn saddle and rock hopped across one last short section of snow. We scouted a route that looked great from afar, but a different line than what others have mentioned in reports. We also saw reports of taking a high shelf from the Vermilion-Fuller saddle but couldn't tell if the snow would be an issue. Of course, when we made it to the Vermilion-Golden Horn saddle, that route definitely went and would have saved us several hundred feet. There's snow but it's on a flat section, and the section after is on a gentle slope that would be easy to traverse. Golden Horn looks gnarly, but goes as easy as they say (class 2+). Routefinding was also really straight forward. And the summit, from all other reports, appears to be the easier one to access (the west, climbers left). The route out was towards Fuller Lake and then onto the Ice Lake trail. After Fuller Lake, there is one section you could possibly cliff out on if you're too far west, we just headed a little further east to pick up the trail.

Stats: 13.28mi, 4911ft

6/28 - Lookout Peak

We parked at Ophir Pass. This was really just an easy add-on before making the long drive back home. Climb13ers has this at class 2+ but I'd definitely call it a class 3. We went up the grassy slope to gain the ridge where there is some decent route finding involved. On the way up, I went up a class 4 chimney, but on the descent an easier class 3 was found on climbers left. On the descent, we came down the red couloir. Getting into the couloir was the toughest part, the dirt at the top was compact and not very grippy. Butt scooting was helpful, and then it was a combination of scree skiing and trying to limit the amount of bigger rocks from falling. I angled towards the shelf towards skiiers left, and then entered a narrow gully on my right for the rest of the descent.

Stats: 2.89mi, 2051ft