8/13/2024 Route: East Ridge from Black Bear Pass Posted On: 8/13/2024, By: astranko Info: Done in conjunction with Trico, walking the road from Red Mountain Pass side. I had to bail on plans for Three Needles because it was storming at 8am! The ridge was in better shape than you'd expect! The junky stuff is really only a few hundred feet and can be cleared easily. Black bear is gated between 12.2k and 12.4k due to mudslides on the Telluride side. Imogine is also closed for the same reason as of today. The road was in better shape than I expected given it's reputation. I think an AWD suv could easily get at least to the Porphry/Black Bear turnoff. On my way down, I saw a some kind of Mitsubishi crossover up at ~11.8k driven by a very uncomfortable person who politely inquired if this was the way to Bridal Veil Falls. I helped them get turned around and saw them get back on the highway with all their bumpers intact somehow. Texas plates, in case you were wondering. |
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7/16/2023 Route: Trico and T10 from Black Bear Pass (hwy 550 side) Posted On: 7/16/2023, By: cloudkicker Info: Black Bear Pass is still closed to OHV travel and likely will be for another 1-3 weeks, so I went for a quickie up Trico and T10 this morning. Some snow drifts on the road still but summer conditions on the peaks. Trico was easy and quick albeit a little loose. T10 was awful as advertised. Trash rock, scralus, and *do this one in snow* are all apt descriptions. I skipped the south summit of T10 since it appears Lidar hasnt messed with this peak at all. They are still equal in elevation. The north summit with its 500ft of trash was enough BS for me. Wore some old microspikes coming down T10 which may have helped marginally with the controlled falling down the scralus. I didnt die so I guess thats that. No summit registers to be found on either peak. |
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5/29/2023 Route: North & East Faces Posted On: 5/30/2023, By: supranihilest Info: I'd forgotten what a pile of !#*% this peak is. Be sure to do it on snow if you can. From Red Mountain Pass we took the Black Bear Pass Road a short distance then just went straight up snow to the second, higher, long switchback, then along the road under Trico's east ridge to the pass. Snow was hard as a rock in the morning so progress was quick. We climbed up "T 10"'s north face which was mostly snow and quite steep. Front pointing was required at the top, or scrambling up steep, horrifically loose trash to climber's left. We actually found the old summit register which someone had chucked ~150 below the summit. If that was you, shame on you. One member of our party skied the northeast ridge which had great snow and was a little less steep. Probably would have made a better ascent route too. Two of us descended the east face which wasn't particularly hard but it's just pure, unadulterated garbage of the worst quality. Be extremely careful on any dry parts of this peak, it's super loose and easy to send missiles flying down. |
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10/7/2022 Route: Trico to t10 Posted On: 10/7/2022, By: smartt Info: Trico and T.10 Used micro spikes on descent |
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8/31/2021 Route: from Black Bear pass Posted On: 8/31/2021, By: SnowAlien Info: Did a combo with Three Needles, Bridal (T11) and 13,159 by Columbine lake. Traverse between two T10 summits is comically loose (we stayed on the east side of the ridge below towers), but kinda fun in a twisted way. Climb up Three Needles is on very unpleasant scree, but the scramble to the summit is fun. The ridge traverse to Bridal is better. We wanted to take a look at Columbine lake and finished on UN13,159 as it was very close to the lake and just a 30 min detour. Nice tour to get a good overview of 4 different basins. Only Three Needles has a register. |
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7/27/2021 Route: East Slopes, Southeast Ridge, Southwest Ridge Posted On: 7/27/2021, By: supranihilest Info: I parked at the junction of Black Bear Road and the unmarked road to Porphyry Gulch about one mile up from US 550. From there I hiked to Black Bear Pass and then up the horrible east slopes of "T 10"'s listed, northern summit. It's steep and insidiously loose. Nothing is attached to the mountain so you're basically just clawing your way up. It isn't hard but it's slow and beyond tedious. Since "T 10"'s southern summit is allegedly of the same elevation I also wanted to tag it, so I returned down the east slopes and followed a talus bench along the east side of the summit connecting ridge until I hit the southeast ridge, which I hiked up to the south summit. This ridge is vastly easier, just Class 2 talus. It probably isn't necessary to tag this summit but if they are indeed the same elevation I would just to be safe. I then continued on to Three Needles via the southwest ridge, which looked pretty gnarly but was just steep and loose Class 2. |
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6/7/2021 Route: From black bear pass Posted On: 6/7/2021, By: Sbenfield Info: Hiked after Trico. From the black bear pass, this peak has 2 double summits of equal elevation connected by an uncomfortable ridge. I'd recommend a helmet for some lose rock. To hike both summits, I dropped below the ridge and un-gracefully traversed a steeper snowfield using crampons & axe |
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8/12/2019 Route: Black Bear Pass Posted On: 8/13/2019, By: osprey Info: I drove up the Black Bear Pass Road approximately one mile and parked at the junction of the Black Bear Pass road and the road going into Porphyry Basin. I hiked about 2.5 miles to reach the Black Bear Pass saddle. From the saddle I turned north on a users trail to the summit of 13,321 ft Trico Peak. This is a very easy ascent and took only about 20 minutes to summit from the pass. There is some scree to go through but nothing major. Returning to the saddle I went south to the summit of T10. T10 is more difficult due to being a steeper climb and also almost all the route is on either serious scree or somewhat loose talus. Black Bear Pass road usually has a constant flow of jeeps but a snow field about 0.1 mile below the pass kept most of the vehicles away. I was able to run almost all of the way down from the pass to the Porphyry road making a 6.5 mile round trip in 3 hours 15 minutes. |