West Needle Mountains Grand Traverse!

After sleeping at Molas Pass and with an impeccable weather forecast, I hit the trail at ~5:30 AM to go conquer all the peaks between the Animas River and Lime Creek. The first two hours consisted entirely of approaching the Twilights along the Crater Lake Trail. Eventually, North Twilight appeared from around the corner.

After a few more minutes, I arrived at Crater Lake and began my accent up North Twilight's northeast ridge.

Overall, the ridge was incredibly pleasant. Starting off as a snow climb, it morphed into class 2 grass and eventually into a class 2+ ridge traverse to the summit.

Once on the summit, I scouted my route to Twilight Peak. From previous trip reports, I knew that there would be a major notch to avoid and some class 3.

After easy class 2, I approached the notch and bypassed it to the west.

After crossing the snow in the Notch, I climbed the solid and enjoyable class 3 to the summit of Twilight. This summit afforded fantastic views of the Needle Mountains to the west!

From Twilight proper, South Twilight was a short stroll. From South Twilight, I then needed to drop down the saddle with 12929 and West Needle. This was mostly class 2 with a few class 3 moves and a short glissade.

From the saddle, I followed a rudimentary trail over to West Needle. West Needle provided the most enjoyable scrambling with sustained class 2+ and class 3 on enjoyably solid rock. I probably threw in a few class 4 moves as well due to the fact that I didn't feel like finding the class 3 workaround.

From West Needle, I retraced my steps down the ridge and began to traverse over to 12929. I would highly recommend getting this peak on the way back to the saddle as it is more pleasant to ascend from the West Needle side and descend further north. The decent gully is very loose and it's much easier to skree down than up.

After returning to the ridge, I glissaded a good 600 feet down toward the North Twilight-N3 saddle. Reaching the saddle required about a half mile of unpleasant side-hilling on loose scree. One at the saddle, however, I simply walked up the gentle slopes of N 3 to the rather uninteresting summit. The views, however, were outstanding!

From N 3 to N 2 (South Snowden) required a long but uneventful tundra traverse.

South Snowden to Snowden required more scrambling. After dropping off the ridge to the west and regaining it after bypassing some cliffs, I arrived at Furthermore's Big Tree, Deep Notch, and Little Tree. From here, Snowdon's summit only required mostly class 2 and a few class 3 moves.

Descending Snowdon's North Ridge was exciting! While all class 3, this would be a nightmare when wet!. The crux was a short chimney that one could argue was class 4. From here, N 1 was only a hop and a skip away!

Final Thoughts:

This was a really fun day! I definitely preferred all the peaks in the Twilight Region to those around Snowdon; less loose and better scrambling lines. The views were excellent all day and the route can certainly be kept in the class 3 region. It's definitely long! It took me roughly 11 hours, 18 miles, and 7,500 feet of gain to get all 8 ranked peaks so be ready for that if this link-up is appealing!