Running Around the Southern Sawatch

White
Cronin
LoCarb
Cyclone

14.9 miles
3,300’ gain
7,100’ loss

After hosting me for a month in June / early July up in New Hampshire while we trained on the 4000 footers, Maxine decided to join me for a couple of weeks of romping through Colorado. With a 2022 CDT thru hike on her mind, exploring CO, seeing the CDT in person, and getting in some high altitude training and a few 14ers was an intriguing offer for her. After flying into Denver and spending some time in Breckenridge with friends and summiting Quandary while I was out exploring the Weminuche, Maxine was acclimated and ready to go by the time I made my way back up north.

Cue some class 2 type 1 fun on centennial 13ers. After a quick trip up Buckskin to keep ticking off centennials on the 8th and a visit to the Kite Lake area, we made our way to the 2WD TH for Antero in preparation for Cronin and friends the next day.

Having completed a single day Prezi Traverse and single day Extended Pemi Loop together earlier in the summer, I knew Maxine was tough and up for back to backs. Other than Cronin, I was open to a number of combinations of peaks, and knew the terrain would be mellow enough for us to go in pretty much any direction. Having done Antero in mid May this summer though, I was more interested in the nearby ranked 13ers.

With a late wake up time of 8am and a perfect forecast, we packed up with the intention to hitch a ride from someone heading up Baldwin Gulch. After 20 minutes and a bit of smooth talking, we managed to hitch a ride in a sweet old school short wheel base Jeep with a father-son prospecting duo. “We’re heading up to the base of White Mountain, that’s where the best rock is” the father tells us. Perfect. “Let me just smoke this cigarette and air down the tires and we can be on our way”.

Riding up Baldwin Gulch and swapping stories / mountain info with new folks was such a refreshing start to a hike. We spent the hour up just chatting away. Maxine and I received a history of the mining claims in the area, and learned that Antero and White hold some of the best aquamarine deposits in the nation. Super cool. I shared my peak bagging knowledge of the Sawatch and surrounding areas, to which the father was impressed we were heading to Cronin. “I haven’t even been up there and I’ve been living in the area for 30+ years, not much interesting rock up there though I suppose.”

Eventually we made it to a flat area at 13,250’ just to the south of White around 10am. Officially the highest altitude either Maxine or I had ever started a hike from. Fresh legs and tons of open tundra to traverse. Excellent.

Parting ways with the father/son duo as they made their way to the NW side of White, we went directly to the summit for a quick tag and back down to our start in 45 minutes. Time for Cronin. We cut our way across the gently rolling tundra to the SE ridge. Up we go. Easy class 2. Beautiful views. Perhaps slightly hazy. No clouds though, so we’re still good to be out all day.

I wasn’t completely sure about the ridge off Cronin over to Lo Carb, but it definitely looked like it went at class 2. On the summit of Cronin having accomplished my centennial objective we debated 3 options: 1) return down the ridge to Antero. 2) hit LoCarb to go tag Grizzly along the class 3 ridge. 3) hit LoCarb to tag Cyclone and Carbonate along a class 2 route. With some cell service I confirmed a few details, but ultimately Maxine let me decide. Having done Antero already this May I nixxed that. And with Maxine having not been on any Colorado class 3 yet, I was reluctant to introduce her on a loose bicentennial connector ridge. This left Cyclone and Carbonate, which looked like it had a nice potential bail option and return off LoCarb.

Slowly we made our way, drinking in the views and relishing in being above treeline for so many hours with such perfect weather. Eventually we hit LoCarb, and then Cyclone. Easy talus hopping. Nothing too loose. Although it did take a bit longer than expected. By the time we hit Cyclone, we were both feeling it a little bit, despite only being around 3,000’ of gain on the day. I guess because we were above 13,000 feet 90% of the time it added to our perceived exertion. I was tempted to run out and back to Carbonate, but we were pretttttyyyy far from the truck at the 2WD Baldwin Gulch TH at that point. If we couldn’t find a ride down, it was going to be a long day. To give us the best shot of a return ride, we needed to get back to the primary Antero 4x4 road ASAP and hope folks were still coming down.

While I haven’t read about anyone else using the east ridge of LoCarb, it looked like it would be our best bet for an efficient return without running into too many willows. It just required a quick almost resummit of LoCarb and a bit of route finding. The ridge definitely goes easy and makes for a great return. We hit the Antero 4x4 about 30 minutes before sunset.

After taking a break and waiting at the large sign for the pass for ~20 minutes, it was apparent that we were likely not going to get lucky for our return. At this point, we figured if anyone came down later we would meet them on the road, but that we better get started. Thankfully the sunset was enjoyable before the coming of night.

Unfortunately for us, that ride down never did end up materializing. Down and down we went… where we had some good headlamp time before returning to the truck to chow down on some grub while making our way to the Sangres.