I would like to preface this trip report by saying that I strongly advise against anyone taking Organ Mountain’s West Ridge to connect with San Luis Peak. The route involves descending, traversing, and ascending nasty, loose, and exposed third class gullies. I read other trip reports and grossly underestimated just how treacherous this route was. This route is downright dangerous.

Have you ever had one of those days in the mountains where it feels like everything that could go wrong does go wrong? This felt like one of those days. I’m not one to believe in omens but cracking my windshield 30 minutes into the 5-hour drive to the trailhead turned out to be foreboding of how this entire hike would go.

My partner and I began our hike at roughly 4:15 am from the Eddiesville South Trailhead with the intention to hit Organ>San Luis>Baldy Alto>Stewart. There was plenty of parking and the pit toilet was very clean and stocked with TP. We briefly followed the CDT to the start of the Canon Hondo drainage/trail. We turned right at the stream and began to follow it up the drainage. There wasn’t much of a trail initially, so we just followed along the stream. We bushwhacked for maybe 1/2 mile before finding a pretty decent trail. The beetles have taken an enormous toll on the forest in this area, and the trail was frequently interrupted by deadfall. We occasionally lost the trail while navigating the deadfall and after about another mile the trail disappeared entirely. The rest of the hike to tree line consisted of bushwacking along the stream and navigating seemingly endless deadfall. In addition to the deadfall, the forest floor is covered in small thorny plants that you need to be constantly on the watch for. It took much more time and energy than expected to travel the ~4 miles and 1,500 feet up to treeline. We were incredibly relieved when we finally gained the ridge above treeline.

The remainder of the hike up to Organ’s summit was smooth sailing. The ridge consists of mostly grassy tundra with some brief rockier sections. There were some small snow field to cross, but they were brief and nicely frozen. The route is almost entirely melted out. It isn’t until you reach the summit that you get a view of Organ’s dramatic west side. The stark contrast between the east sides rolling hills and the west sides sheer cliffs and spires is beautiful.

We descended the boulder field north from Organ towards the saddle with a subsummit of Organ. If you head a little east before descending this boulder field the slope is noticeably shallower. Once we were almost at the saddle, we began the traverse west across the boulder field towards the flat grassy area to Organ’s west. The boulder field isn’t too bad at the start but gets progressively worse the further you go. The angle gets steeper, rock gets looser, and the feeling of exposure increases. This traverse is manageable, but not particularly pleasant.

Looking back at Organ’s west face from this flat grassy area was one of the best views of the day, it is breathtaking. The crux of the route comes directly after this. There is a large notch in the ridge that requires you to drop into a gully on the south to bypass the notch. There are multiple gullies in this area, and they are all treacherous. Each gully offers an assortment of loose rock with consequential exposure. It is incredibly difficult to tell from above which gully you need to take. Unfortunately, I didn’t get very good pictures of this section as I was too preoccupied figuring out our best move. I had a GPX file to reference and my partner and I entered what I believed was the correct gully. About 100’ down the gully I checked my gps again and my pin had jumped, indicating we were likely in the wrong gully. We decided to proceed a bit further down our current gully to see if there was a way to proceed. We wound up pretty cliffed out. There appeared to be a 4^th or 5^th class route down to the base of the notch. We took a moment to rest and come up with a plan. I had looked down what I now know was the correct gully earlier, and it was even steeper and likely just as loose as the gully we had already done battle with. We were both already feeling unsafe and exhausted after spending way too much time in those damn gullies and we made the decision to backtrack to Organ.

After all the bushwhacking and trail finding from the morning, we opted to drop into the Stewart Creek valley. We traversed back across Organ until the slope eased up enough for us to drop into the valley. We descended another shitty loose gully for a few hundred feet and finally the gully turned to grass. We continued to follow the valley down towards the main San Luis trail. We were debating continuing another 2,000 feet up to San Luis once we gained the main trail. Unfortunately, the bad luck wasn’t quite over for my partner. Having all the difficult terrain behind us we had relaxed a bit. I crossed a short snowfield and then hopped across a few rocks immediately after the snowfield. My partner followed behind. She crossed the snow and took a few steps on the rock and slipped, hard. She lost her footing with her wet boots on a loose rock. She slammed onto a pile of rocks. It was unclear if she was seriously injured but after a brief rest, she said she was ok to proceed. We would later find out that she had a baseball/softball sized deep black bruise on her ass. She must have taken a rock directly to the ass, she’s still hurting from that one.

Fortunately, the rest of the hike went smoothly. We got to the base of the valley and found an easy place to cross Stewart Creek. We climbed the creek bank and our feet were blessed with a class 1 dirt trail. The relief we felt in that moment was palpable. We still had about four miles of hiking to get back to the car, but it was easy-going. I won’t go into too much detail because it is just the standard route on San Luis. The trail is mostly clear with a handful of sections with some deadfall that had to be climbed around.

The day didn’t go as planned, but fortunately we made it back safely and still managed to summit one peak. This hike turned out to be far more difficult/dangerous than I had expected. We will be back for what should be a much simpler jaunt of San Luis, Baldy Alto, and Stewart.