3/23/2024 Route: From La plata TH Posted On: 3/24/2024, By: kyrawhitworth Info: Did not come close to summiting. We chose to mirror the route described by arthurspiderman but instead contour around the 12er. This was a truly poor route today as conditions were relentless. The terrain is complex below tree line requiring a lot of routefinding and bushwhacking on skis to keep it skin able. We made it to the saddle between the 12er and the unranked 13er 5 hrs after we started. We dropped skis and started booting up the ridge and ended up turning around shy of the unranked as our time and energy had run out (steepness and deep snow on the ridge made for slow going for us). Skied like two minutes of great snow before having a truly awful time in the trees. Taking a longer route following the road for as long as possible or traversing from Sayres and dropping down on that side would be better in deep snow conditions Id think. |
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12/30/2023 Route: La Plata TH To 13,288 to 13,440 Posted On: 12/30/2023, By: arthurspiderman Info: Geckser and I followed the La Plata standard trail about 0.1 miles past the small wooden bridge and then cut right through the forest towards. We were aiming for the saddle between the 12er and Unranked 13,288. We used skis and Geckser broke trail to set a fantastic skin track through the trees. Took off skis twice on the ascent for about a minute at a time to get past some steeper terrain Dropped off skis at 11,700 and then booted to the saddle at 12,400. At the saddle we switched from boots to trail runners and quickly made it to the two peaks. Feet were never too cold and could mostly stay in rocks. After getting back to the skis we continuously skied all the way down to the bridge. Great early season ski. Get it while the skin track is still there! It would also be a great snowshoe. Looks like we were the first winter ascents of these peaks on 14th.com, definitely a hit and would recommend! |
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8/21/2023 Route: Sayres Benchmark, 13460, 13300F, and 12614 loop fr Posted On: 8/21/2023, By: JasonKline Info: I wanted to do a loop of Sayres Benchmark, 13460, 13300F, and 12614 from the La Plata trailhead, but the only results I found online descended 12614 to the west into the private property clearly marked "No Trespassing." The route to the east of 12614 didn't look too horrible on the map, so I tried descending that to the La Plata trail and taking that back to the trailhead. Mercifully, it worked out fairly well (although it wasn't anywhere close to what I would describe as pleasant). I went back part of the ways to the 12164/13300F saddle before descending. It was annoyingly loose for the first several hundred vertical feet, but got better as I descended. I had to go around one section that nearly cliffed out, but it wasn't too hard to find a route around the difficulties. I made a few class 3 moves, but one could probably have kept it to class 2 with more careful route finding. By piecing together clear sections between the trees, it was possible to keep bushwhacking to a minimum except for a few hundred feet of unavoidable willows just before rejoining the La Plata trail. It looks like I'll have to put together a trip report for this route! |
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7/16/2023 Route: From Sayres Posted On: 7/21/2023, By: kwhit24 Info: We left Denver around 4:45am and parked before the bridge crossing described in other TRs. For the second creek crossing we found a sturdy log since we didn't see any other areas to cross. Once across we joined up with the road and followed that all the way to the cabin. The road is very easy with a lot of switchbacks all the way to the cabin and beyond. we saw some ATV tire tracks in the morning all the way up near 13,200'. When comin down we saw a few vehicles coming down from the cabin. Instead of traversing/side hilling to the saddle between Sayres and 13460 we just stayed on the road up to 13,200 to get to the ridge. This only added a little distance and gain. The rest of the route to Sayres BM is obvious just taking the ridge. Then over to UN 13,460 we again stayed on the ridge. Before heading to UN13,300F we decided to leave our packs at the point where we'd take to the grassy slope described in Trotter's TR. We ran over and tagged UN 13300F (great views of La Plata) and and back to our packs. It did added like 150' back to the packs but the grassy slope was worth it. Once near 12,200' we turned left to aim for one of the switchbacks in the road. We contoured using game trails and working through a few bushes and joined the road at 11,600'. As mentioned before we utilized Trotter's TR a lot especially the route back to the road and it avoided a whole bunch of bushwhacking. (12.01 mi; 4,662' gain; 7:01:18 time) Start at TH 7:05am; Sayres BM 10:15am; Un 13460 11:50am; Un 13300 F 12:20pm; Back to TH 2:05pm |
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5/20/2023 Route: East bowl Posted On: 5/20/2023, By: 9patrickmurphy Info: Truly awful snow conditions. We should have turned around a few times but somehow didnt. We summited and skied, but boy was it an effort. We went up the La Plata trail until a log bridge near a camp site a bit before the trail switchbacks. Lots of ugly postholing and wallowing up to this point, where we switched to skins. Postholing on skins much of the rest of the way. Didnt see many people on Sayres. We were able to switchback up to the ridge and avoid being under any cornices for the ascent. Dropped in from the summit, and triggered many wet slides. Skiing was not fun. The entire ski out was not fun. Had to skin back to the trail before another hour or two of postholing. Still a gorgeous day in the mountains with good company. This would be an excellent route if the snow conditions were halfway decent, as k_Gergis reported last year. |
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5/14/2022 Route: East Face Posted On: 5/15/2022, By: k_fergie Info: This is for the UN point near Sayres BM and La Plata (there's another UN13460 somewhere else in the Sawatch and you can't distinguish the two when making a CR). After failing on Sayres the previous day we decided to be efficient and cache all of our heavy ski gear high up in the basin to ensure a successful summit and corn harvest the next day. If anyone doing Sayres or LaPlata this weekend saw barefoot prints in the mud and thought who was crazy enough to be up there with no shoes...that may have been us. Skied the east face off the summit after ascending via La Plata trail with a lightweight pack. Steep drop-in (mid 40s) leading to a beautiful corn harvest. The snow is dusty and warmed up fast (sun hit it at 6am), we dropped at 9AM and wouldn't have wanted to wait another minute |
