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Grand Turk (13,180)
Sultan Mountain (13,368)
TH: Little Molas Lake (10,905)
Total Elevation gain (2,463)
RT: 7.5miles (approx)
Date of Summit: 08/13/10
I set off from Durango late morning and arrived at Little Molas Lake around 9:15am.
At 9.30am I headed north, away from the trailhead for the Colorado Trail and back up the road which I drove. After about a minute of walking, there is a sign on your left stating that trail is closed-- I headed up here and through the trees in a northward direction. Once you make your way through the first set of trees, your first objective becomes visible. This is the notch, back/center of the which sits between Pt. 12849 (left) and Pt. 12734 (right)
I started out heading to the left of the notch and around the side of a hill and ending up doing a bit of bushwacking until I reached a campsite just below the basin. However, an easier route is heading to the right and crossing over the little creek and ascending to the right the creek. Here is a close up of the basin from the outskirts .
The destination is still the notch, however once you are here, you will be able to see a faint climbers trail on the left side of Pt. 12734 that leads all the way to the notch. Once in the saddle I headed east around Pt. 12,899 and picked up a climber's trail that took me the saddle between Pt. 12,899 and Pt. 13,087. Once on the saddle I climbed up and over a rock formation to the base of Pt. 13,087. This picture is looking back upon the route taken to the base .
From the base I climbed to within 60ft of the summit of Pt. 13,087 and then followed the trail around the west side of the peak and back down to the saddle between Pt. 13,087 and three summits of Grand Turk. From the saddle to Turk, there is no trail. shows the middle and eastern summits of Turk. The saddle is right below the western summit. I ascended the saddle until I reached the faint climbers that heads west to Sultan. From this point I headed east across the face of Turk, making my way to the the shallow saddle on the ride between the middle and eastern summits.
Once I summited turk, I made my way back down to the saddle and to the climbers trail to Sultan. Picture is the traverse to Sultan from the end of the climber's trail. The route is obvious from here.
Picture looks back from Sultan on the entire trip. Directly below is the traverse from Western Turk to Sultan; eastern Turk is the highpoint. Just below the western summit is the traverse to Pt. 13,087. In the background is Snowdon (left) and the Twilights (Right).
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Those are two of my favorite mountains in the San Juans. I'm surprised the climbers trail is so faint, as those peaks seem to get quite a bit of traffic from the Durango locals...
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