Uncompahgre has three 13ers south and east of it that are in prime position for sunrise photography looking towards the giant 14er during summer, when the sun rises so far north that it throws shadow across the long south ridge of Unc and properly lights up the vertical north face. I opted to climb them as two separate morning trips to take advantage of this and lucked out with moody colorful sunrises both days, and thought these peaks deserve more attention given how simple they are and the views they pack.

When researching trip reports for this hike, I noticed that many early reports labeled this peak and it's sisters with their elevations pre-LIDAR, which was a reminder that every time new measurements are taken, the names of these peaks will change. One more reason we need some actual names for these peaks. UN13,155 (or whatever it may be when you're reading this in future years) in particular is clearly visible from Slumgullion pass and deserves a better name than it's current elevation. See my report on the Sangres UN 13,577 for more of my unsolicited thoughts on why naming some of these 13ers does everyone a service. I digress.

For the rest of this report I will refer to UN 13,155 as Little Uncompahgre. It looks like a miniature of the larger 14er from Slumgullion and from the further east UN 13,110, so why not call it something people might actually remember? I hiked these a little more than a month ago and had to use 14ers.com to look up their names because nobody remembers a series of numbers. Further, it's dehumanizing and these peaks have enough personality to be given a little humanity. If someone has a different name for it, I'll call it that publicly instead. It just needs a name. I digress.

I'd read mixed reports on if the upper TH for Nellie Creek is drivable in a Subaru. The great human forum of knowledge known as Reddit was split between "yes, it's easy" to "you will utterly destroy your car." Normally I would just drive it as far as comfortable, but I read consistently that there were few places to turn around, and I had the time and a terrible forecast the day before to scout the road on foot. On June 7, with the wind audibly howling off the peaks above, I walked the road from bottom to top and was pleased that both water crossings were low given the drought year, and apart from a single muddy hole about 3/4 of the way up, it would be a simple drive. I also scouted a phenomenal campsite nestled in some trees by the open meadow 1/4 mile below the upper TH which looked like a great place to spend a few nights bagging these peaks.

On the hike up and back, I was passed by several groups of loud ATVers, some with questionable sobriety. I hadn't been to LC area in a while, since before Silverton went nuclear on the off-roaders and Lake City assumed the mantle of haven for them. I hope "all that money" LC is raking in from hosting them is enough to cover the cost of road repairs, because those things are not gentle on steeper gradients or hairpin turns and they move a lot of dirt when they rev through. I digress again.

Strava showed 8.34 miles and +2149'. Not a bad way to stretch on a red flag wind day when being up higher would have been unpleasant.

Back at the car, I spent the day in LC before driving the road back up to the meadow that evening and finding it unoccupied. Early to sleep, then started the remaining road at 230am. Opted to leave my car claiming the campsite so I'd have a quiet flat place to return to for the afternoon and evening. Short walk up to the TH where it was empty at this hour. From here, it's a short walk up the trail towards Uncompahgre before picking a spot to leave the trail and head south towards Little Unc.

None of the other TRs for this peak had done the approach in the dark, but the terrain looked gentle from all the pictures I saw, so I assumed it would be straightforward and it was. Left the trail and jumped the creek shortly past the Big Blue Trail turnoff and continued south, working around taller mounds of talus on the rock glacier spilling down from Little Unc. The nearly full moon provided enough light to sort of piece together gentle sections of elevation gain as I worked towards the base of the ridge.

Gaining the north ridge of Little Uncompahgre would be the crux of all three of Unc's children. A few snowfields blocked the easiest access to the top, and though I had packed an ice axe and microspikes, I didn't want to deal with putting them on. I traced the edge of one of the snowfields on some very loose and steep tundra and talus and scampered up to the ridge. Getting down that would be very unpleasant, but a different problem for a different hour.

Once on the ridge, it goes at fun class 3 if you drift left, but a climber's trail drifts to the right and keeps the route class 2 all the way up. I took the easy path up and the class 3 down when the sun was up. This would be a reasonable place for new to class-3 scramblers coming and doing some laps to grow their comfort with exposure. The rock on the ridge crest was very solid.

I arrived on the summit at 5am and with sunrise expected at 530am, that gave me time to photograph blue hour and eat some breakfast. I was a little concerned about getting a gray sunrise given some clouds were gathering on the eastern horizon and threatened to block the sunrise. Waking up this early for a sunrise photo shoot only to get skunked by a few clouds during the prime minutes of alpenglow is a first-world frustration.

Unfortunately, the window of horizon light shut just before sunrise, so there would be no alpenglow or big fiery clouds underlit. When the sun finally did burst above the horizon cloud layer, there was enough gold to make the wakeup worth it.

I lounged around up on Little Unc for well over 2 hours enjoying the changing light and munching on sweet rolls. While hanging out up there, I decided to go for Uncompahgre despite not being super interested in bagging it initially. I've attempted it three times before in snow and turned around for various reasons, and really wanted to bag it in snow still.

With the wind being only mildly annoying this day and nothing else to do until the next day's sunrise from UN 13,110, I opted to add Unc despite it being dry and less photogenic than any other time I'd been this close to it. I could also avoid downclimbing back into the bowl I'd come up by hiking down the south slopes of Little Unc into the unnamed basin down there east of Broken Hill. This went very easy on mostly mild grassy slopes, though I paused regularly to consider traversing the slopes below Unc's cliffy south ridge. It looked steep and loose enough that I eventually gave up on minimizing the loss and so dropped all the way down to the basin before cutting back west to meet back up with the trail from Matterhorn Creek heading up Unc's shoulder. This was an enjoyable hike for an hour without a soul to be seen.

Once the trail from Matterhorn Creek links up with the standard route from Nellie Creek, the solitude ends, but the views of Little Uncompahgre continue as one works the tedious switchbacks up the greater Uncompahgre.

There's not much to say about ascending the trail to Unc. It's well graded, the scramble on the backside of Unc is more fun than I thought it would be, and the final summit pitch after the scramble is fairly demoralizing on tired legs.

Once through the scramble the tedium of a 14er standard route got more interesting as I sat to have a snack and drink my gatorade. Just as I was opening the bottle, I noticed little flakes suspended in solution inside the bottle. I shook the bottle but they didn't dissolve. Took out my phone and had a conversation with two chat bots about what was going on. There wasn't agreement between them: Gemini thought since it was 6 months from expiring, it might just be oils or flavoring agents that fell out of solution given the elevation (over 14,000' at the snack spot). Chat was more conservative and said given the history of the bottle sitting in a warm car trunk for a few days prior, it might be mold.

I sat there for 20 minutes giving these two chatbots all the information I could think of to justify drinking that electrolyte up there, but in the end it felt too risky and so I poured it out to rid myself of the weight the rest of the day. I generally drink a full 28oz of gatorade (one of the big bottles) and a full nalgene on hikes of this length, but also carry an additional 32oz Nalgene "just in case," so I wasn't going to perish from dehydration up there, but I was missing the electrolytes. Shout out to the various parties I met on the summit who gave me some salt tablets and cliff blocks. You guys kept it from becoming a bonkey type-2 day.

Summit views from Unc were expansive but given the late morning sunlight and thin snowpack, I'd still like to get back in winter or spring to catch better pictures.

The descent back to the meadow campsite was a non-event and I enjoyed a long afternoon and evening there before returning to the upper Nellie TH the following morning for Uncompahgre's shorter two children.