El Diente Peak

February 2022

A Long Day at the Dentist

Fair warning. I'm gonna try and squeeze as many dumb dental jokes into this trip report as possible.

Did you know that the toothbrush was invented in Arkansas? If it had been invented anywhere else it'd be called a "teethbrush".

Big thanks to my hero Toyota SupraNihilist for giving me great intel on this route, I hadn't even considered Kilpacker as an option before he clued me in on the viability of this approach. He had gone up 3 weeks prior, and while his trench was pretty much gone, a faint outline of his track made the route canal finding much easier below treeline. I'm awarding Ben the ADA award for outstanding wisdom teethsmanship.

2 Weeks prior to this trip I was able to get to the top of Mt. Wilson. The day before I left I told my SAR crew I was 50/50 on doing the traverse to El Diente. Forecast was good, but I got a later start than planned, and didn't make great time to the top of Wilson, and honestly, just wasn't feeling it that day, despite really great weather. So went to the backup plan of doing El Diente Separately as a long day trip.

Forecast for this weekend wasn't great Friday/Saturday, but weather was looking good for Sunday, and the N. San Juans were showing green for avy conditions, so plan was to start around 10-11 on Saturday night at the bottom of Dunton road. Left home in Aurora Saturday afternoon, with a stop planned in Montrose to have 2,000 calories worth of skillet and pancakes at Denny's before the long (dental) operation.

Left the car just after 11pm, not terribly cold, around 15°. Good thing I use Sensodyne.

Ben told me he got up the road in 1:50, that became my goal. Road was well tracked by snowmobiles.

I was mostly able to find my way along the road, until a mile or so before the TH, when I wandered off into some stray snowmobile tracks that petered out, I ended up putting snowshoes on earlier than I should have, and lost the crown to Ben.

From the Kilpacker TH I initially just wandered towards the trees in a bit of randomness, took maybe half a mile from there to stumble onto Supra's old route (canal). Didn't take many pictures, as there wasn't much to see in the darkness. I braced for a long night of breaking trail. After the waterpik crossing El Diente flossed into view, it looked great.

I was making good time in the darkness, and hadn't made many route finding mistakes. Snow was really pretty firm, not much postholing. Wasn't as hard to navigate as I expected even past treeline. Sun began to rise just as I reached base of the dental chair.

There was a short stretch on El Diente's south slope that had a fairly steep section of hard snow, after ditching snowshoes I went straight for crampons, they were quite adept at piercing small cavities into the snow.

As I made my way up towards the ridge, I was able to meander onto mostly rocky areas. A few places there were some tougher climbing sections to stay on dry rock.

The only thing I was worried about on this trip was the snow on the north side of the mountain. Ben had warned me that it was pretty poor quality. I knew there was potentially another option to stay on the south side, I had discovered it a few months prior doing Wilson to El Diente in October when there was a fair amount of snow on route. But who knows if it would be viable now.

When I reached the top of the last short gully, I looked at the south side ridge, I remembered how I went that way a few months prior, but the gully on the south side was an unknown. I proceeded to drop down the north side of the ridge for just a very short distance to get around a tall rocky filling. Ended up stepping in the snow just a few times to confirm that Ben was right, the snow was really decayed. Fortunately I was able to quickly regain the ridge, which had some exposure, but it wasn't bad to move across.

Reached the summit just before 9am, 9:44 from start. A little cold, a little windy, but views for days.

I spent a good 25-30 minutes enjoying the great summit views before heading down. Wasn't difficult to retrace my tracks back down to my snowshoes. Took lots of pictures on return now that I could see what I was looking at.

Shortly before reaching treeline the most miserable part of my day would begin, the nastiest section of sidehilling I've ever endured, my snowshoes simply would not graft the snow well, every step they slid down sideways and put nasty pressure on my feet. It felt like this was a 6 mile section, in reality probably 1.5-2 miles. I would have killed for some anesthetic to rub on my feet to numb the pain. It was brutal.

From treeline it was easy to follow my tracks most of the way, only got off track towards the end for a bit.

Once back at the TH, I managed to stay on the road 100%. Despite it being Super Bowl Sunday, there were a few snowmobilers out and about. Someday I'll have to tell the story about Tim Whatley and his trip to the Super Bowl.

No regrets doing El Diente this way rather than traversing from Mt. Wilson, getting to see the Kilpacker area in winter was worth the effort. Thanks for reading.