• Trailhead: Beartown -- Right at the 813 trailhead for Hunchback Pass
• Route: Standard route via Sunlight Creek
• Climbers: Nathan, Brian, and John
• Distance: ~25 miles and ~8000'

I climbed my first 14er (and first mountain) when I was 10 or 11, way back in 1994 or 1995, Mt Democrat, because I remember being struck by the view as Kenosha Pass descends into South Park and being shocked when my parents told me it was possible to climb some of the peaks we could see. A week or two later they took me to climb Democrat. I'd say I was hooked at that point, but I only climbed a few others over the next few years, and it wasn't until I was about to leave for college in New York City when I revisited climbing, thinking that it would impress others once I got there (it didn't). I climbed the Decalibron with my friend Sean, who I'd eventually climb 20-30 14ers with. In the years between August 2002 and August 2008 I climbed all the 14ers, including repeats of those I'd already done, figured I'd never finish the centennials, and then in 2009 started climbing centennial 13ers anyway. I wrote the initial versions of the 14ers.com app(s) in this time and kept climbing centennials slowly and it seemed like a foregone conclusion that I'd finish them after a while, especially as I finished some big scary ones like Thunder Pyramid in 2016 and Dallas and Teakettle in 2018.

But as the list dwindled, I found my tolerance for exposure going down with it. I almost didn't go on our trip up Dallas, though once I was on it I felt good. Soon Jagged was the only really tough one left, though events kept transpiring to avoid it and I found myself not being bothered by this because I was scared of it. In fact, I welcomed the delays. In 2019 it was an infected cut from a trip to Papua New Guinea (though not from the barefoot trundling through the jungle I did, oddly). Various events of 2020--a pandemic that you may have heard about, some family death, getting stuck in Morocco, classic stuff really--had me in an especially bad mental state such that even going up the class 2+ route on the back side of Trinity Peak was doing my head in. But by the end of summer 2020, Jagged was all that remained. Over Labor Day 2020 I backpacked up Sunlight Creek from Beartown/Kite Lake as a partial scouting trip and partial trip to an amazing place and got the feel for the road and the trail.

I'd climbed perhaps 60 or 70 different mountains with my friend Brian by that point, including our mutual 14er finisher on Snowmass, Rainier, and Kilimanjaro. We intended to finish the centennials at the same time as well, and he was significantly more excited for it. To be honest this was probably for the best, because left to my own devices I may have always stayed at 99/100 centennials. I continued to dread the exposure and danger and instead crave simpler summits and backpacking trips to read a novel by a lake. But his excitement meant that I tried to put aside my reservations and we set aside the last two weekends of August 2021 for an attempt, depending on the weather. We also recruited John, his brother, who's a much better lead climber than either of us. The first reserved weekend was preceded by a San Juan summer snowstorm that briefly left snow down to almost treeline and we decided to postpone to the following week rather than risk ice or snow on the shady spots on the Jagged route. I'd been busy at work, including a trip to Denmark immediately before that weekend so hadn't had time to fret. But as the final weekend approached, all looked good weatherwise and I tried to put my concerns to the back of my mind by obsessively studying the route.

There are a number of high quality trip reports for Jagged out there. If you've looked at them, you won't be surprised by anything the route has to show you. It's generally obvious and the difficulties are well documented. I don't expect that this trip report will add all that much to general route finding, but I can provide some info on two important pieces:

1. Finding and staying on the proper trail from Sunlight Creek
2. The long rappel from the summit to bypass most of the difficulties (which I saw almost no documentation on)

Trailhead and Approach

We came in from Silverton via Stony Pass. This pass is easy, though narrow with some long steep sections with no room to pass. We did it in the morning and had no need to pass so this was fine. The road up to Beartown was generally fine on the way up, though I'd say it was definitely rougher than the year before. I have a stock 2019 TRD Off Road 4Runner, and it would be tough to make it there with something less capable, particularly on the way down. And either way if you do you're definitely going to get willow scrapes. There's a long section with a big trench in the center of the road, and also some annoyingly placed large rocks that require some careful maneuvering and tire placement. But the way up was a bit easier than the way down and we found a spot right at the trailhead and were hiking by 11:30 or so.

Sunlight Creek Trail

Finding the Sunlight Creek trail is critical to success from this direction, and the good news is that it's pretty easy to find, though a bit of a faff to actually hike. Essentially if you cross Vallecito anyplace within a few hundred yards south of where Sunlight Creek flows into it then you'll find the trail within a hundred feet or so on the west side of Vallecito. There's a small use trail through the grass (very faint) if you cut off of the Vallecito Creek trail shortly after it first opens up, and this trail cuts a bit to the northwest and you can choose where to cross. Even in late August we didn't find a place to rock hop, so we waded via various methods. Following the trail to Sunlight Creek is easy, though we lost it briefly after crossing. If you do lose it you'll find it again, as not all that far up from Vallecito the drainage becomes quite constrained on the north side of Sunlight and the trail is right alongside the creek. But finding this trail is NOT optional, and it's not an easy trail by any means. Easy to follow once you've found it, but there's an unpleasant amount of climbing up and over and down boulders and through branches and bushes.

It does ease up slightly in difficulty between perhaps 10k and 10.9k, when there's less growth and it just climbs steadily and crosses Sunlight Creek to the south side. After a bit of meandering, you end up in the flattish area around 11,100', where I believe the trail to be impossible to follow. This area is indicated in the map below by the yellow area. But if you head towards that open hillside you will eventually find a nice trail that has switchbacks and is by far the best way to proceed. Eventually you level off around 11,500, and shortly after you do is the best time to cross Sunlight Creek in order to approach Jagged. We camped at the area circled in blue on the map.

Climbing Jagged

From the campsite we easily found the trail (partially because I'd been locating it on Google Maps aerial views) and followed it to the creek crossing shown on the GPS track above. We cut up from here, though a trail continues from across the creek and would be less steep and likely less overgrown. Regardless, it peters out around 12 or 12.2k, though is occasionally visible as you make your way upwards. As other TRs have indicated you can largely make your own way from here. We chose the more direct left gully, but ymmv.

Upon arriving at the flat spot at 12,700 below Jagged and Jagged Pass, we looked up to see a view familiar from many other trip reports. We then cut up somewhere between the first crux and Jagged Pass, trying to stick to grass for an easier ascent. Before long we were at the well-cairned and easy to find base of crux #1

I left trekking poles here, positioned upwards to prevent marmots from chewing them, as well as my packed rain shell given the forecast and the weather. As would become the rule of the day, Brian and John set up the climbing pitch while I watched and tried to keep my mind right.

The first crux was the easiest. In terms of moves, if you're more comfortable than I am with exposure (which constitutes 90% of people climbing Jagged) you could probably do the normal way without rope, though in our case there was some water running down the middle that required some more difficult (Class 5) moves to avoid. It sounds like this is the case more often than not. With three of us and a long rope (more on that later) the easiest way was to have John, our lead climber, lead the pitch, me follow with a figure-eight on a bight, and then Brian go last tied into the end of the rope. So at the top of each crux I had some time to explore the next parts of the route. It's very easy to follow between the cruxes, at least assuming you've read the TRs/Roach. From the top of the first, it always seemed clear where to go, with occasional third class moves. Follow the Roach route description to where you hit the base of the cliffs and cut across and descend slightly to the base of the second crux. There were cairns where you might get confused, but it was fairly clear.

For the second crux, most TRs I've seen show people climbing the crack on the left, which is what we did. The 6-10' of crack you see in the pictures is all there is to it -- it's just walking after that. Its awkward and you may want to protect it (as I certainly did) but that's all there is. The rappel station is a ways above it though. Roach's directions are slightly different and may be slightly easier though more exposed, but we didn't investigate. We roped up for this section because I'm a wimp, and John was kind enough to place a nice sling to help out on this part.

From the second crux's rappel station to the base of the third crux is barely any distance at all. It would be more if you didn't rope and were free climbing the crux, though still less distance than crux 1 to crux 2. It seemed very obvious where to go, and heading towards the rock shaped like a piece of pie (from a previous TR) was helpful guidance. Crux #3 was the hardest of the standard cruxes, but 5.2 feels like a fair rating of it to me. And at that point you're at the notch that leads to the far side.

The far side was where my worries grew. That was the part of the route that I'd been nervous about and had kept me from sleeping the night before. For the first part, you climb high and to the left of the boulders that you see immediately after the notch. This is class 3 and not very exposed.

But then it gets harder, and was one of the moves I'd read about that worried me the most. You can stay along the edge and step across a LOT of air, or climb behind and through a boulder and descend down onto a wobbly rock and step around. We opted for the latter and Brian was kind enough to give me a supportive belay hand as I stepped down and off. This works well since he's got about 80 pounds on me.

At that point was more ledges, but I could tell we weren't at the chimney of the standard route yet. That would require another step around a boulder with a lot of air that I was REALLY not wanting to do. John stepped around, eyeballed the final chimney with its new(ish) rockfall, and wasn't feeling great about it. This was great news to me personally because it meant that he'd want to lead someplace closer and I wouldn't have to step around over that air. We'd met only one other party since crossing Vallecito Creek, and one of them had climbed Jagged before (without ropes -- there's always someone better than you when you climb in Colorado) and had mentioned a place to mantle up before the normal chimney so we knew it would go. John led this section, which I regrettably don't have a picture of. But it went up a crack a bit to the left, and seemed awkward to lead. There was one difficult move this way that required a bit of a pull up and was maybe 5.4 or 5.5? It definitely felt harder than anything on Dallas, so let's say 5.5.

From there, after climbing back and through a narrow spot between some boulders we were on a platform rock at the top of the belay station for the final crux (crux #4, now that the rockfall has happened). And it was mostly easy scrambling from there, at least for those who weren't me. There was a mildly airy move that was objectively not that hard just below the summit ridge, and I just froze a bit, as I'm wont to do. John was kind enough to set a sling for me to comfort myself with, and then I was on top of the centennial world with amazing views all around.

The summit pictures have many smiles, but they were mostly forced, honestly, because I knew we had to get down and I couldn't relax. We spent some time on a beautiful summit though. We had some snacks, I spread some of my dad's ashes, and we prepared for the rappel. And by we, I mean Brian and John. I was just trying to maintain my composure and confidence. I was definitely glad that I would never be revisiting the south side of Jagged though. Brian and I wore the exact same party hats that we'd worn when completing the 14ers, though we covered the text that said "14er Finisher" with something more appropriate.

The Summit Rappel

Roach mentions that this is "a dramatic 165 ft. rappel." There are some bolts on the summit right near the (broken) register that we used, but I don't think that's where Roach was referring to. From the bolts to the next reasonably wide spot is significantly more than 165 ft, though there are some small ledges that you could probably stop on as a party of two. It would be very close quarters though. I suspect that Roach's description refers to something a little bit further west on the summit that isn't bolted. We had an 80m rope, and from the bolts this took us down down down down to the grassy area that's part of the second crux. And with this 80m rope I was juuuust able to make it to the base of the second crux, so the total rappel distance was at least 80m/260ft. It was the rappel that seemed like it would never end.

One challenge was that our parachute cord that we were going to use to pull the rope turned out not to be quite long enough, ending on a ledge about 30 feet above the end of the rope. Fortunately we had an extra long length of sling for just such an eventuality, which you can see in blue in the picture of Brian rappelling down. I think a 70m rope would still hit that grass on the 2nd crux without much difficulty, but I was glad to have the 80m.

I was super happy to have done this rappel because it avoided all the most difficult parts. Many people will balk at carrying an 80m rope, but for us it was totally worth it. For me in particular, since Brian carried it. I'd highly recommend getting someone much bigger and stronger than your scrawny self to carry this rope -- it makes it much easier. Pulling the rope was a challenge because there were 260' worth of spots for it to get caught, but we got it down. Having bypassed the worst of the cruxes it wouldn't have been the end of the world had it gotten stuck, but I'm glad it didn't.

At the high point between crux 1 and crux 2, from which you descend slightly to the base of crux 2, someone had set up some slings to rappel from. Not wanting to bother with some annoyingly difficult class 3 downclimbs we took the opportunity. We actually had even more trouble pulling the rope here, but again, we got it. And then we descended a short distance on fairly obvious grass ramps to the top of crux #1, and made the easiest of the rappels down to its base where I found that a marmot had gotten at my poles despite my best efforts. But it felt amazing to be back on solid ground and to feel unexposed again. It was here that I began to feel good about having completed the centennials.

The trip down was very straightforward. We caught a bit of rain at camp, but packed up and packed out to where Rock Creek trail meets the Vallecito trail. We set out first thing the next morning and were back at the car around 9:30. The drive out was more difficult, for whatever reason. A couple of obstacles that looked more awkward from above (and definitely harder than last year). I ended up using the rock crawling mode on my 4Runner to make it easier. We took the far side of Stony Pass towards Creede on the way out, and it was also harder than last year. Quite rough and a couple of sketchy parts with fallen timber, though still easier than the last section of the Kite Lake road. The way home also ended up being faster, 7 hours vs. 7.5

Final Thoughts

I definitely don't have what it takes for lots of exposure these days and I'm generally less interested in summits than I once was. Jagged was one of only two summits for me this year (the other being Isolation Peak in RMNP). And as I mentioned, if not for Brian pushing me I would have been a forever 99/100 centennial climber. Still, I feel a huge sense of accomplishment and I'm glad to have done it. CMC lists ~70 centennial finishers, though given some prominent missing names (both Roaches, Chris Davenport, Ted and Christy Mahon, Jean Aschenbrenner, Andrew Hamilton, and more) I'm sure that the list is at least three to four times that many. But it's good to be a member of the club. Perhaps now I'll take up a more sensible hobby that doesn't involve dangling over 1,000 foot cliffs. Thanks to Bill Middlebrook for providing me an opportunity that got me my current job (which I love) and for creating this community. And of course thanks to everyone in this community for providing information for those that would come afterwards and providing inspiration for what's possible.