I decided to climb La Plata Peak on a beautiful Friday morning in early August via the Southwest Ridge route. The drive to the South La Plata Trailhead (identified as West Winfield Trailhead on here) takes about 45 minutes after turning on Chaffee County 390 Road from US 24. The first thirty minutes or so is unpaved with not too many loose rocks. However, the last 15 minutes (the drive is a couple of miles I think) or so after reaching the old mining settlement of Winfield can be rough, but kind of fun. I drove a Hyundai Santa Fe without four wheel drive, but managed to make it within a few minutes walk of the trailhead. The road includes numerous stream crossings, I will add. As mentioned by other writers, park at a junction a few hundred yards from the trailhead and walk to it because the last few hundred yards is steep with some big rocks. This area where I recommend to park has a road sign with two options on it- the trailhead is to the right. Also it is probably useful to know that there is no sign mentioning a West Winfield Trailhead that I saw- it is actually called South La Plata Trailhead, as you will see once you reach the trail.

There were only a few other cars parked at the trailhead when I started hiking around 7:30 am. The hike itself is gorgeous. You reach treeline within a mile or so of hiking, and enter into a beautiful valley that is kind of swampy. From there you hike up a steep slope to a ridge, and then turn right, as the pictures on here indicate. After hiking for a little bit, you then reach a large boulder field that requires scrambling for a good amount of time. After this you reach the top of this the trail (which isn't very easy to find in the boulder field), as indicated by a sizable cairn. The rest of the hike is about 1-2 miles with rocks (not too much scrambling) and a small false summit until you reach La Plata Peak. There are different routes to the top, some presumably more popular, so you will begin to see more people once you are within a quarter mile or so of the summit. I took the same route down back to my car. I would just say to take caution when descending (the opposite route of pictures 5 and 6 on the Southwest Ridge page) on the trail. The trail is pronounced and easy to follow in this section, but the smaller rocks on it seem to be a lot looser going down as compared to going up.

All in all, this is a gorgeous hike with a solid mix of different landscapes. I will also add that there is no part of the route where it is necessary to cross snow, but the marshy valley can be muddy (as of early August 2019). I would agree that the round trip distance for this trailhead is about 7 miles. Thanks for reading, and I hope that I provided some useful information!