The Sarvis Creek Wilderness Thirty-Seven Summits

by gore galore

In the last week of October, Gore Girl and gore galore completed the unique exploration and climbing of the Sarvis Creek Wilderness thirty-seven summits of the northern Gore Range with a first ascent of the rock formation of summit 10,078 and an unusual 360-degree panorama from the last summit of 10,158, possible only because its summit was part of a burn area

SARVIS CREEK WILDERNESS

The Sarvis Creek Wilderness created in 1993 is probably Colorado's least visited and known wilderness area. It is entirely subalpine and one of solitude. Only two trails of about twelve miles each cross the wilderness and another of eight miles borders its northeastern boundary.

The wilderness is one of dense forest with fallen timber from beetle kill, blow downs, and two large burn areas with its match stick piled timber. There is little of the forest floor itself.

Our explorations were based on historic and current map study for the most likely routes. But once leaving the trails or bordering Forest Service roads, all but two of the summit ascents were a maze of bushwhack routes with the next fallen trees usually the only landmarks from the previous ones.

The underbrush particularly of willows and f fern fields with their ankle grabbing root stems in drainages that had to be crossed and scrub oak with its thorns in the west Sarvis Creek area hill sides were no more welcoming.

CLIMBING HISTORY

Little is written about the area other than some brief descriptions of the Silver Creek and Sarvis Creek trails and some rock climbs in the Sarvis Creek Dome area.

Known summit ascents date from the 1930s and 1950s by government surveyors to place benchmarks on five of the summits.

Rock climbers came to the Sarvis Creek Dome area in about 1976 when the Dome as it was then called was discovered as a potential climbing area by a climber who was learning to fly an airplane while over the location. Several of the rock tower formations in the Dome area were included in a 1990s Steamboat Springs Rock Climbing guide.

We discovered the Sarvis Creek Dome from the summit of Gore Mountain. We planned our trips to come after the raptor closure around the Dome from April 1 – July 31. Our first trip was a cross country bushwhack route from the Routt Divide Trail over 9,520, one of the thirty-seven summits and concluded with a Class 2+ climb of the east face over the huge granite slabs which characterize Sarvis Creek Dome.

We also wanted to find the original climber's trail to the Sarvis Creek Dome. On our second drive by along the Red Dirt Road we spotted a cairn and the trail. The climber's trail took us to the base of the northwest and west faces and then around to the south where we followed a timbered gully to the east face slabs.

While we went as explorers and peak baggers rather than technical climbers, the summit afforded us views of the rock formations in the Sarvis Creek canyon below as sketched and described in the old rock climbing guidebook.

Peak baggers came in the mid to late 1990s for the ranked peaks and even today few climb the eight ranked peaks of the Sarvis thirty-seven summits.

EXPLORATIONS

Our interest in the Sarvis Creek Wilderness came from two independent ascents of Kraft Benchmark, 10,357 just south of the wilderness boundary in the fall of 2025. Its summit was high enough to peer into the Silver Creek drainage to the surprising number of visible rock formations or “bubbles” that otherwise were hidden in the forest from the trail itself.

Over the winter months of 2026 we mapped twenty-eight summit elevations from Trails Illustrated maps, four summit elevations from the Gore Pass and Walton Peak topographic maps that were not on Trails Illustrated, and five summits from LOJ that had LiDAR elevations rather than map contour lines. Dirt Benchmark, 10,811 is the highest Sarvis summit.

Five summits are mapped names and three have unofficial names. We included three summits in the Proposed Sarvis Creek Wilderness Expansion. Two summits included are just outside of the wilderness boundaries. Kraft Benchmark, where the idea started, is one half mile outside and 10,224 by one eighth mile. Thirty-one summits are above the 10,000-foot elevation.

Of the thirty-seven summits, we climbed all but the Silver Dome, 10,116 as we found our attempted route was too technical to climb for us. Because of our interpretation of some perceived ambiguity in the rock climbing guide book, it took us three trips of searching to properly locate the Silver Dome.

Our explorations also led us to name the prominent rock formations of “The Bear”, “The Three Giants”, and “The Thrones” in the Silver Creek drainage and “The Fingers”, “The Beehive”, and “The “Tortoise” in the Sarvis Creek drainage.

We divided the summits into ten groups for approaches and to make the hiking and climbing seem manageable. But it was not always so because of the toilsome bushwhacking. We took four hours to climb 800 feet in the first mile on a contrived route from the bridge crossing of Sarvis Creek to Service Benchmark, 9,975. We made it but had our doubts in that first mile.

Morrison Benchmark, 9,209 was no better. If we had not found the abandoned 1930s sheep driveway part way up its slopes, the scrub oak and fallen timber would have defeated us.

We looked upon 10,482 as a day trip but it extended into two days of seventeen hours and 51 minutes. After seven hours to make the summit, we were met by a rainstorm in the lower descent which made the bushwhacking more miserable. We found the Sarvis Creek trail and then lost it in a willow choked drainage. Climbing a ridge, we located the trail before dark and then slowed to a crawl at night as gore galore fought an upset stomach back to the trail head.

Most of the 225 miles and 47,869 feet of elevation gain was tedious bushwhacking of hours at a time. Because of this, we developed a bushwhack rating of 1 for a forest floor, 1+, 2, 2+, 3, and 3+ meaning swinging hand-held tools to clear vegetation of which we used none except our hand-held hiking poles to break branches.

We had two minor injuries while bushwhacking. gore galore suffered two hand puncture wounds that required bandaging. For this reason, we recommend for serious bushwhacking long durable pants, long sleeve shirt, gloves, eye protection, and head covering.

While the bushwhacking wounds were minor, our most serious encounters were on the night drives home. Driving the open range of Highway 134 on the west side of Gore Pass in the blackest of night, Gore Girl narrowly missed a Black Angus cow sleeping/standing in the driving lane. Hitting a 1,000 pound plus bovine head on would have been disastrous for all three.

Driving Highway 9 south of Kremmling, gore galore saw a deer in the oncoming lane, braked at the last seconds as the deer darted in front of the car narrowly missing the bumper by a hoof print.

Of the thirty-seven summits, we believe for good reason that six were first ascents. Two of these were of substantial rock tower formations that we found a way to climb after much searching for a route and four that had surprising rock outcroppings that had to be located by GPS to determine the X map marked elevations. And none of these showed hunter or other evidence of human passage.

RESEARCH

Besides climbing and exploring the Sarvis thirty-seven summits, we had another interest in investigating and researching the history of the wilderness.

We found that contrary to Routt County histories, Thomas J. Farnham in 1839 did not cross the Gore Range by climbing Gore Mountain and descending Sarvis Creek to the Yampa River. Our research shows that Farnham crossed the range further south on a dividing ridge above Gore Pass.

Gore Girl in writing a much needed history of the Sarvis Timber Company, 1912-1921, questions the U. S. Board On Geographic Names decision that Sarvis Creek was named for the Sarvis Timber Company when the name Sarvis Creek appeared on maps as early as 1871.

The Sarvis Creek Timber Company logged and floated cut timber down a five-mile flume to the Yampa River and the logs were then further floated to the mill near Steamboat Springs. We came upon a section of the timbers of the flume on our bushwhack descent from Service Benchmark.

We documented six areas of sheepherder aspen tree carvings. Four of these areas are not shown on The Aspen Archives website.

We found records of government surveyors and their routes in placing benchmarks on five summits in the 1930s and 1950s. We were able to follow three of these routes. The other two cross private property.

While climbing the east ridge of Gore Mountain we found some rusted oil cans. We dated these from the 1950s and saw that on the Gore Pass 1956 topographic map that there was a lumber camp of six structures where the parking area for the Silver Creek trailhead is today. The oil cans were evidence of timbering in that area that coincided with the results of a beetle kill.

In the meantime, there have been Colorado hiking and trail guides, bouldering guides, rock climbing guides, ice climbing guides, and mountain climbing guides but no bushwhacking guide. Perhaps we should work on one based on our explorations. It might be titled “Fallen Timber, A Bushwhack Guide and History To the Summits of the Sarvis Creek Wilderness Area.”