The Chicago Basin Four

The Chicago Basin offers one of the most unique Colorado 14ers experiences, no matter how you slice it. I've heard wonderful things about the train experience, so although I toyed with the idea of hiking in from Purgatory or Vallecito, I was dead set on making the train experience happen despite closures in 2019 from avalanche debris and in 2020 from Covid. After waiting for over two years, our group of 7 was able to secure tickets and we were off!

If you've done this trip before, you will likely not find any new information here (although I imagine it would be fun to relive the experience of this incredible basin through some fresh photos). In similar fashion to the great TR from 2017 by JQDivide, this report should help give some information to those who are wondering what to expect when tackling the Chicago Basin Four (Sunlight, Windom, Eolus, and North Eolus) via the Durango & Silverton Train.

Our party consisted of me, my wife Taylor (aka tayjack), Chris (aka Stiffler_From_Denver), Shawn (aka Exiled Michigander - who finished several years ago on Eolus), Johan, and our two friends from Denver, Collin and Kendra. The plan was for Chris, Shawn, and Johan to add 20 miles by approaching a day earlier from Vallecito (check out Stiffler_From_Denver's TR on that approach here). Each group had a radio, and we were set to rendezvous at the top of the Basin, then we would climb together and they would take the train out with us (note that if you want to do it this way, you will still need to pay full price for round trip train tickets. As of July 2021, they do not offer one-way tickets from Needleton back to Durango).

The non-Valecito group got some pizza and an AirBnb in Durango before boarding the train at 7:30 the next morning...

DAY 1: Train & Hike in

Right off the bat, there are a couple things I wish I would have known prior to boarding the train in Durango:

1. 1. They run a tight ship on the Durango Train, and when they say be there by 7:30, they mean it! They ask hikers to be there by 7:30 so packs can be loaded. They are also stop taking packs at 7:45 sharp, for an 8:00 departure. A couple members of our group (who will remain nameless) dropped their packs off at 7:44 and the backpack railcar was closed about 30 seconds later. Note that this does not include time to go inside and wait in line for your tickets (which you will need to pick up)
   2. Parking. We didn't receive any information on this beforehand, and almost missed the train as a result. There is a parking lot about 3 blocks northwest of the train depot (adjacent to the old McDonalds) where you are supposed to park. There was a line of cars that wrapped around the block and when we pulled up, we found out that it was cash only and they strongly prefer reservations in advance. Luckily the attendant was gracious and we figured it out. Parking for 4 days was in the neighborhood of $32.
      

Despite starting our trip with a brisk jog with our heavy packs, we made the train (barely) and enjoyed an amazing 2.5 hour ride to the Needleton stop. The conductors and breakmen (and breakwomen, if that's a word?) wear old-timey garb that makes you feel like you've taken a step back in time. Choose the open air gondola if you have the option. It's a worthwhile experience and the enclosed cars were hot and cramped.

Once off the train at Needleton, we took about a half hour to tape our feet, eat a snack, and hike upstream a couple hundred yards to stash some beer for the return. It was a mad dash once hikers were off the train. There were about 40 of us in total, and it looked something like the Spanish running of the bulls as people jockeyed for position in hopes of securing a camp site in the Basin. We were the last group to start our hike up to the Basin, and perfectly content with it. The train dropped us off at 10:30 am and we started up toward the Basin right at 11.

Plan on adding at least a half hour to the typical 3.5 hours to get to the Basin due to the massive amounts of recent deadfall about 3/4 of the way up. It's easy enough to pick your way through, but it was pretty slow going. About 2.5 hours in, we were deep into the deadfall, but we ended up making pretty good time to the Basin after about 4 hours (from Needleton) at a brisk pace with two brief stops.

Chris and I had planned to be on our BCA radios at the top of each hour, starting at 2 pm (shamelessly stole the idea from the movie I am Legend). It worked like a charm and at 2:00 pm I heard a broken transmission and could recognize someone calling out my name. It was Chris, and he had made great time from Vallecito over Columbine pass and told me "get your ass up here, we have the best site in the whole Basin!" Sweet relief. He, Shawn, and Johan already had 20 miles on us, and they were relaxing in the highest allowable site in the Chicago Basin. After just over 7 miles from Needleton, we found ourselves in pole position for the next day.

DAY 2: Sunlight & Windom

The weather forecast for the period we were staying in the Basin was questionable at best... A strong monsoon surge with 100% chance of precipitation and flashflood warnings were among the many red flags we saw on the forecast. Two days before we left, our front range weatherman even called out "concentrated moisture over the San Juans." Yikes.

With this in mind, we got an extra early start for Sunlight and Windom: up at 3:30 am, on the trail by 4:15. We started the climb up to Twin Lakes with fresh legs, and made it up the 1,500' from our camp site to the lakes in about 45-50 min. We carried less than a liter of water each, and stopped to filter at the lakes. There are countless other places to filter further up (the lake is not your last chance).

The first gulley up Sunlight is loose and rockfall is certainly a factor (especially after torrential rains the night prior). Helmets here are a good idea. Above the gulley, you are rewarded with some incredible climbing on excellent rock. It's solid class 3 with some easy class 4 "choose your own adventure" type moves, if you want.

We took our time with ample rest stops, we found ourselves on the summit before 7:45 am, just under 3.5 hours from camp.

A note on the Sunlight Summit Block: From someone who is relatively middle of the road as far as exposure tolerance goes, I found the summit block to be a total rush. Its a relatively safe move on super solid rock, but the airiness on the true summit is unlike anything I've experienced on any of the other standard 14er routes (it's really hard to capture in a photo). However, I never felt in danger -- it was just fun (you don't want to overshoot the final move, though!).

Taylor, Chris, and I all opted to do the summit block via the "leap of faith" move... One guy who summited right before our group was on belay and chose to climb the slabby rock to the left, which looked to be harder climbing but bypassed the airy "leap." In hindsight, I would have loved my approach shoes here. My Salomon Quest hiking boots definitely left something to be desired in terms of grip.

The climbing up to the block was very easy and straightforward; however, I was not expecting the leap back to be that much of a mind game. The rock slopes downward in such a way that there is no doing it slowly. Once you've committed, you have to go and let gravity do its thing!

Some other members of our party climbed up to just below the leap, others stayed at the summit marker below. No shame here -- Everyone gets to count it as a summit in my mind!

We descended and after about an hour, we were in the upper basin that separates Sunlight and Windom. There was no defined route here, but we used our intuition to stay high and follow a gash/ledge along some solid rock and met up with Windom's prominent West Ridge. There is some incredible geology along this route -- Taylor found a geode the size of a football, along with several smaller ones... all of which she left for others to enjoy; Please do the same if you are lucky enough to come across these :)

From there, it was about 600' of some fun class 2-ish scrambling with the occasional class 3 move. We made a slight routefinding error that put us a little bit too far on the North side of Windom, which offered some more class 3 moves than if we had just stuck to the ridge. No biggie, rock here was fine and everyone in the group was comfortable. But there are way too many cairns on the upper part of Windom -- choose wisely.

After about 2 hours from leaving Sunlight, we were standing on the summit of Windom at 10:15 am. Clouds were quickly building, so we took some photos and made haste getting down. Once we were back to Twin Lakes, on cue, the skies opened up with lightning and hail. We descended the last 1,500' to camp in what I call "the lightning jog."

It rained, hailed, flooded, and rained some more for the next 14+ hours, with little reprieve. If our tent wasn't staked down, it would have floated away. Rarely does rain stick around like that in the Colorado high country. It was unique and a bit fun, but mostly disheartening, as we had plans for Eolus and N Eolus the next day.

Day 3: Eolus and North Eolus

After a few hours of restless sleep to the sound of heavy rain, I awoke to my alarm clock at 3 am and it was still raining buckets. It sounded like my tent was in the shower. If you spend much time outside in Colorado, you're probably well acquainted with the summer weather patterns, which includes an afternoon thunderstorm that rolls out by the time you go to bed... That was certainly not the case on this trip, and at 3:00 am on day 3, I found myself laying in my tent and absolutely disheartened by this fact.

But as I was laying there pondering a plan B, C and D, the rain miraculously shut off. By 3:30, I was out of my tent rallying the group for a quick ascent of Eolus. Shawn (who was sleeping in a bivvy) and Johan had gotten miserably wet that night, and so they opted to stay at camp (I don't blame them!), while the rest of us moved out by about 4:15 am. Our ascent time from camp to Twin Lakes was nearly the same as the day prior -- about 50 minutes.

After filtering some water at Twin Lakes, we were up at the Eolus/N. Eolus saddle in a little over an hour from the lakes. There is a prominent crack leading directly up to the saddle -- the easiest way to gain the ridge is to skirt around the crack and climb the slabby rock to the right, but we wanted to add some flavor to the route and chose to climb the crack/chimney up to the saddle.

We were relieved to have a sky that was free of clouds (for now), but the evidence of yesterday's deluge was still lingering. All of the rocks were still damp and the dirt was saturated and therefore extremely greasy and slippery. The rocks on the North aspects of Eolus had a thin coating of ice on them, but the Southern face had melted in the sun.

For this reason, the remainder of the route was a bit spicier than any of us were anticipating. All of the moves felt relatively secure, but with mud-caked boots on wet rock, it took much more deliberate and careful climbing. The rock ledges are stacked like terraces, which are separated by patches of downward sloping dirt and grass... Not a big deal when it's dry; pretty spooky when it's wet. We encountered several other groups who shared our feelings on the conditions of the route that day.

Apart from the less than ideal conditions due to the rain the day before, all of us really enjoyed the route. I would liken the upper part of Eolus to a shorter version of Pyramid and with better rock. It was fun to zig-zag up the ledges made from nature's Legos.

An hour of focused climbing past the saddle put us on the summit of Eolus by 8:30 am. This has to be one of my favorite views of any 14er summit... Not only can you look back to Sunlight and Windom to enjoy the fruits of your labor from the prior day, but the views of Jagged, Vestal, and the other rugged San Juan peaks are absolutely breathtaking.

With good weather, we hung out on the summit for about 45 minutes while we waited for the light breeze to finish drying off the rock for our descent.

After 40 minutes of careful descending, we were back at the catwalk and another 10 minutes of quick scrambling on solid rock saw us to the top of North Eolus (just under an hour from summit to summit).

The last 10 minutes up North Eolus was my favorite climbing of the day... Entirely different rock than Eolus -- Solid, slabby, and super grippy. It reminded me of the last couple hundred feet of Sneffels' SW Ridge. So fun!

Once again, we returned to camp just in the nick of time. As soon as we sat down for lunch, the skies opened up and returned to their regularly scheduled programming for the rest of the day. With a sense of accomplishment and relief, we huddled together under our tarp and took turns sharing toasts with the small amount of whiskey and wine we had lugged up. I recall someone toasting "to our tarps"... I'll drink to that!

We all retired rather early, and as I slipped off into a Tylenol-PM induced slumber, I had a vivid nightmare that the train tracks were taken out by a mudslide and we were left stranded at Needleton.

DAY 4: Hike out & Margaritas on the train

The Mystery of the Missing Beer and the Landslide that actually did happen...
Remember that beer stash? We did too. It was all any of us could talk about for the last 15 minutes of our descent toward Needleton. Upon arriving back in Needleton, we discovered that our beer stash had been raided. Even worse, attached to the paracord we had used to secure the beer was a plastic bag which contained one crushed can of our beer and $29 cash. I'm sure leaving $29 was how they tried to justify their actions, but to us, it just added insult to injury. I can't imagine the mental gymnastics these people had to do to arrive at the conclusion that this was okay.

However, in the midst of trying to solve the mystery of our missing beer, we were informed that a large landslide had taken out a portion of the tracks and the train had not run for over a day! (one person said two days). The crews had been working until 2 am the morning of our pickup to get the train back up and running... Other groups planning on returning before were not so lucky (apparently several hiked out via Purgatory, and several other groups were rescued one by one on diesel hand carts).

I would like to think our missing beer found a home with some thirsty and desperate hikers who were left stranded by the landslide. It made me feel better to imagine that our beer might not have gone in vain; instead, it may have brought bit of joy to an otherwise hopeless group of stranded hikers. I'll stick with that story in my mind.

The RAT Test
A bit of a rabbit hole, but a cool one nonetheless... Several members of our group have recently read a book called The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, which has become my favorite book of 2021, hands down. It's about how the comforts of our modern world are slowly killing us, and what we can do to combat it. In The Comfort Crisis, Easter describes how it is very well scientifically supported that being in the backcountry for 3 days or more will boost one's creativity. But how do you quantify that? I'm glad you asked. One way is through what is called an RAT Test (read more about it here).

Stiffler, being and Economist and a Professor, wanted to test this theory on our group of seven. So, he put together two RAT tests -- one to be taken on the first day of the trip, and another to be taken on day 4 while waiting for the train. A much larger scientific study (cited in the book) claims that creativity is boosted by approximately 50% after 3 days in the backcountry. We were amazed to find out that 6 of the 7 members of our group improved their RAT scores (and therefore creativity) by almost exactly 50%. I got 5 out of 10 questions correct on the first day, and got 8 out of 10 questions correct on day 4 -- a measured creativity improvement of over 50%!

After taking our RAT Tests and coming to terms with the fact that our beer stash was gone for good, it was time to board the train back to Durango. Beers on the train are $5 each (tax included) so plan your cash accordingly.

I'd normally be reluctant to sign up for 4 days of sitting in the rain at 11k, but it's not so bad when you're in great company. I'm thankful for friends who feel the same.

Garmin Stats (trip totals):
Distance: 27.57 mi
Elavation Gain: 11,581 ft
Moving Time: 17:39:08