I'm not a big fan of backpacking, but sometimes it's necessary to reach a remote summit. Don't get me wrong; I always enjoy camping in remote areas, but you'll never catch me backpacking the entire Colorado Trail.

In looking at my older son's list of remaining bicentennial peaks, Mt. Jackson stood out because it required the longest backpack (8.5 miles one-way). With a good mid-September weather forecast, Randy and I decided to target Mt. Jackson, at least in part so we'd tackle the longest approach to a bicentennial peak that Randy had left.

Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2019. Randy and I arrived at the Cross Creek Trailhead near Minturn in the early afternoon. The weather forecast called for a 30% chance of rain this afternoon, 40% tonight, and then mostly sunny skies the next couple of days. We grabbed our backpacks and headed toward the first landmark: a bridge over Cross Creek after a little over a mile.

The trail was quite pleasant, with some minor ups and downs but mostly a steady gradual climb.

At 9880', we headed across the second bridge over Cross Creek and set up our tent nearby.

After cooking dinner and getting our daypacks ready for tomorrow's climb of Mt. Jackson, we headed into the tent for the night. Less than an hour later, rain began and continued for two hours.

Thursday, Sept. 12, 2019. Randy and I were pleased to see clear skies when we got up. We recrossed the bridge (i.e., toward the trailhead) and soon left the trail and began bushwhacking northwest up the hillside.

At 10,800', we began following a climber's trail that contoured southwest to about 11,000', where it reached the drainage from Mt. Jackson's east side. The trail fizzled out, so we bushwhacked northwest above the creek to just below a small lake at 11,660'. We crossed the creek and went around the lake on its south side. Once past the lake, we climbed the cirque on Mt. Jackson's northeast side. The rock was reasonably stable.

Once on the ridge, we turned left (south) and climbed about 300' to the summit of Mt. Jackson (13,670'). Last night's snow had yet to melt along the ridge but was not an impediment.

I knew that the Mt. Jackson summit register and canister my dad and I left on July 31, 1998 were still there in 2010 thanks to Darin Baker's 9-5-2010 trip report.

Today, however, I was disappointed to find both the canister and register gone from Mt. Jackson's summit.

We then headed toward Unnamed (UN) 13433, a neighboring tricentennial, where we were surprised to find a CMC register. No one had signed since Otina "bergsteigen" Fox was here on August 20, 2019.

In 1998, my dad and I returned to the Mt. Jackson - UN 13433 saddle, worked our way around the snow, and descended from there. Randy and I had already determined that the snow was too steep to descend safely due to the cornice, so we descended UN 13433's east ridge a few hundred feet and then headed directly toward the valley. We had to pick our line carefully to find a break through a cliffy section, but our route worked out well.

Once we reached the valley, a northeast descending contour took us through an interesting passage (that we unfortunately failed to photograph) and deposited us just west of the small lake at 11,660'. From here, we retraced our path from this morning and returned to our campsite. The next morning, we slept in until 8:00 AM before backpacking to the trailhead. We then drove to Minturn for a much-needed and well-deserved lunch at Kirby Cosmo's BBQ, where we celebrated having only two relatively easy backpacking trips left to access Randy's remaining bicentennial peaks.