Unnamed 13002

Route: SW Gully from Josephine Lake
Posted On: 9/23/2024, By: 9patrickmurphy
Info: Pics attached for snow conditions of the Northern Sawatch and the Elks. The trail from Henderson Park TH is quite good the whole way to Josephine Lake. It is worth noting that the trail does not follow the route shown on forest service maps or Gaia - not a huge deal, but the real trail meanders a bit more and the trail junctions are in entirely different places than those shown on maps. I followed the route shown in the last conditions report, taking the grass ramp in the basin East of the peak. The bushwhack to get to this ramp is easy, but there is a fair bit of elevation loss and regain on the way back. The obvious gully that leads to the summit has a good amount of grass keeping things not too loose, I encountered nothing harder than class 2+. 

Route: East face/NE ridge from Missouri lakes
Posted On: 7/18/2024, By: SnowAlien
Info: I have done the 8.6 mile, 2,600 ft Fancy lakes to Missouri lakes loop when I first started hiking and thought it would be fun to revisit. I wanted to head up the Missouri lakes trail first, but there was the NFS sign that the bridge is damaged and the crossing is not recommended. Even at the non-alpine hour of 7.30am it's still cold and I didn't want to deal with the raging creek crossing right off the bat, so I started on Fancy lakes trail. After crossing the pass I ran into some backpackers who assured me that the bridge still indeed exists and the crossing of Missouri creek was not an issue. I started heading up after the Treasure Vault lake and saw my first cairns. I tried to figure out which peak is 13,002, but it wasn't obvious. After blasting past the lake around 11,700 ft I realized from CalTopo that the summit is directly west of me, so I headed up the steep East face. The scrambling was absolutely delightful on great slabby rock with plenty of wildflowers, although not sustained until the upper headwall. There are many options, and you can dial the difficulty up or down. I was disappointed not to find a peak register at the summit (just a cairn), since I wasn't convinced I found the right mountain, haha. Not to help in any way, nearby high 12ers looked higher. I decided to descend the NE ridge - the route I initially planned to go up, and right off the summit ran into some Class 3-4 difficulties. The rock is mostly great though. The hardest part was crossing the low-5 class knife edge. That section of the ridge is short but was fairly time consuming. After reaching the small saddle @12,600 ft, the difficulties are over the the rock becomes more brittle. The descent towards Blodgett lake appeared harder, but was about class 3. After that I beelined towards Missouri pass trying to maintain 12,000 ft in elevation, crossing several steep snowfields in the process (with soft snow crossings weren't an issue). Missouri lakes descent took about the same time (2.5 hr) as the Fancy lakes ascent, because the trail is a mile longer. Overall a long day, 4,700 ft gain, about 15 miles loop, but excellent scenery, colorful rock and quality scrambling. 

Route: West Slopes + South Ridge from Henderson Park
Posted On: 7/14/2024, By: tefensmom
Info: I dont have the will to type up a formal trip report so Im just gonna plop a bunch of info here to pay it forward. Theres not much info about this one on the site yet since its new. I tried to upload a gpx and failed. If you want our track send me a message. Here is a map of the route we took from Josephine Lake. Was mostly very loose/steep class 2 with some class 3. We agreed that we liked the descent route, the more northern line on the map, better than the ascent route. They both were steep and loose but the descent route had a nice grassy ledge system for a good portion of it. Summer conditions, crossed a few non consequential snowfields, could have gone around them. An entire elk herd ran right by us. The forest service just wrapped up some trail work there. The trail is a little overgrown with foliage for the first mile or two but very well maintained. Any passenger car can make it to trailhead. Sedans will need to go slow last few miles. I tracked 12.22 miles and 5,197 gain.