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We were really looking forward to our first climb of this year. The conditions can always be a little uncertain in June. I hadn't seen a trip or condition report on Uncompahgre for about 10 days, but we decided to chance it. We lucked out. Well, we weren't so lucky at 4 in the morning. Ugh...we weren't sure how we got the flat, but may have had a slow leak from driving up Nellie Creek part of the way the day before. There is a lot of rock and debris in the road, but passable. Since we already had a late start I didn't take pictures of the creeks until on our way down. So these pics are from the afternoon. They weren't too much smaller early in the morning, but a little. There are still a few drifts in the road, one was pretty bad but we decided to push through it. At about 3.7 miles up the road, there is a tree and a large snow drift blocking us going any further. At least we only had an extra three tenths of a mile extra to walk. Our intention was to start at 4:45 or 5 am (count on about 45 minutes to an hour for the drive if you stay in town), but with the flat, we didn't get started until 5:50. Luckily, that didn't hurt us too much. After a short hike to get past treeline, we put on our microspikes for the snowfields. I think a lot has melted since the last ski report, but there is still quite a bit to go. The snow was hard and we didn't really posthole. Maybe a couple times up near the top. We highly recommend microspikes. Snowshoes would have worked too, but since there was a fair amount of ground between the fields, the spikes were just a lot easier and nicer. We pretty much went directly up to the peak rather than the longer way around (south). I am not sure if there is a name for that small point next to the peak (I called it Uncompahgre Jr.), but we went between that and the peak. I don't know how to enter a route picture, but hopefully you can look at picture 2 and 3 of the standard route page and get what I mean. We finally reached the summit at about 9:45. It was so nice that we spent 45 minutes there. On the way down, we did partly follow the regular trail because the snowfields looked a little smaller. Also, since the way we came was pretty rough, we thought it would be easier. Turns out it probably wasn't and we still cut in earlier than where the actual trail was. There was some postholing near the edges of the snowfields, but really not bad at all. We must have lucked out as I thought it would have been worse. It took us a total of 7 hours 20 min including the 45 minutes on the summit. Another great climb. 8)
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Thanks for the TR. Looks like you had a great day. We will be climbing Sunshine/Redcloud Thursday, Wetterhorn on Staurday and Uncompagre on Sunday. Any beta on Wetterhorn anyone?
Thanks for the post. I'm thinking of climbing it next Wednesday
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