“Holy shit! The moose are running straight towards us!” I yelled.

“Grab Kaiah!” Regina said. “The car is unlocked.” The neighboring campers had already ducked into their 4-Runner and the others had run up the hill to where they were parked since the lower trailhead could only accommodate two vehicles. Regina was standing by the open passenger door and I was standing by the open rear door in case the moose decided to bolt towards us. Although we didn’t know it yet, we found out after a couple seconds why the single cow moose was running straight at us. Another cow moose was chasing the first down into the small meadow where we were camped at West Willow Creek. I’d seen YouTube videos of ‘Darwin Candidate’ people approaching wild moose but had never actually seen one run in the wild. They could REALLY get up on it and move. “Regina, remind me to NEVER approach a calf in the wilderness, moose, elk or otherwise.” Those moose had super-charged V-8’s under the hood. Compared to the straight-6 I was running, I would have been toast!

Las Montaña’s de La Garita’s are almost entirely public land; which kind of makes sense considering how distant and isolated they are from seemingly, everything else. Ask any Front Ranger how much of a pain in the ass it is to reach Stewert Creek, Phoenix Park or Cebolla Creek trailheads and you’ll quickly understand the remoteness. In Spanish, La Garita roughly translates into sentry or lookout, which considering they are on the southern perimeter of the larger San Juan Mountains, also makes sense.

My truck is in the shop, has been in the shop for almost two months now due to ongoing parts and shipping problems. For whatever reason, a deer decided it had a beef with my front bumper back in October and tried to do something about it. It did! Can’t say it was worth it for the deer, but alas, now the truck is temporarily residing in Farmington, NM waiting to be fixed. Since we were now down to Regina’s Crosstrek, we decided to spend the weekend at a 2wd trailhead, something that was “Subaruable.” I swear, that’s only a word in Colorado.

Having the car already packed up, we left work a bit early and made the 3.5 hour drive to Creede. From there, since we were interested in the 13ers off San Luis Pass, we cruised north out of town on #503 and arrived at the upper 4x4 trailhead for West Willow Creek. The road of course, keeps climbing past the official trailhead, but it is most decidedly not 'Subaruaubulable.'

Since there was already a car parked at the lower camping area, we asked if they would be ok with sharing the site for the night. So for the early duration of the evening, we got to know each other and talked 14ers as the night put on her finest array of purples and sunset violet.

“Moose!” I popped up like a whack-a-mole, as I was down at a small rivulet washing my hands in the willows. Sure enough, there was moose barreling right down the opposite slope towards us. Regina was yelling at me to grab Kaiah and everyone was running to their vehicles.

As we were watching from our car, another moose came running down into the small meadow chasing the first. They got probably within 30’-40’ of us. Once satisfied, the second moose turned and trotted back up the slope to where a small calf was waiting and they wandered off together becoming lost in treeline. In over 30 years of venturing into the wilderness, I’ve never witnessed anything like that. As exhilarating and borderline scary as it was, I also consider it to be a special moment to see nature doing its own thing with zero regard for us. Being much ‘longer in the tooth’ these days, it’s moments like this that gets me out of my tent at 6:00 am and not some promise of a new summit.

The objective of the day was Point 13,166, a jalapeño-spicy 3^rd class volcanic plug that shares the same ridgeline as San Luis Peak. Regina is trying to ascend all the ranked San Juan 13ers and needed it. I’d been up it before many years ago and remembered liking it. It’s unusually scrambly and steep for the La Garita’s and probably the hardest thing in the general vicinity. I have many memories of this section of the CT (section 20) from years past and as we were walking the trail, admiring the explosion of blues, purples and ‘China-Cat Sunflowers,’ images flickered in my head like old kinetoscope reels. Like the time that an old mate and I trekked straight down Bondholder Basin (after sleeping outside under some Evergreen trees without shelter) and decided to take an unnamed ravine back to the plateau that serves as the launching point for Cebolla Trailhead and came across old wreckage from a small Cessna airplane.

And my winter summit of San Luis from the town of Creede, I remembered digging my first ever snow-cave at the head of Bondholder Basin. A brief storm had moved in around 8:00 pm and obscured the skies. So instead of continuing on without really knowing where we were, I dug down and sculpted a cave sizeable for two people & a dog (a Bernese to be exact). Sometimes, seemingly benign and random places can become old haunts for no reason other than circumstance.

We reached the ridge and started up the mellow slope towards 13,166’. Once at the base of the plug, Regina and Kaiah waited while I scrambled up first. I didn’t remember much of the actual climbing from my first time, but the rock was pretty solid, stable and exposed enough to get your attention. I left a new register, took the obligatory summit photos and scampered back down. I stayed at the base with Kaiah and Regina took her turn climbing up enjoying everything about it. Point 13,166’ is a good, worthwhile peak to tack on to any summit of San Luis if coming from West Willow. It’s a good peak to break up the mindless tundra strolls of everything else in the La Garita neighborhood.

There is an unranked 13er (13,179’) on the ridge between 13,166’ and 13,308’. As we hiked back to camp, I figured this was a great time to go get it. I missed my original opportunity a few winters ago as San Luis was the objective. But now, with perfect weather and all the time in the world, I deviated from the trail to go tag it. While it is possible to run the whole ridge from 13,308’ to 13,166’ getting 13,179’ in the process, the [huge] notch on the ridge off 13,308’ is a thing to behold. While not as severe as what is between Kendall Mountain and Kendall Peak down by Silverton, this notch is chossy 4^th class on a good day.

I bid Regina adieu and started to angle upwards up the slope towards the upper ridge. There’s a grassy slope that runs at class-2 from the east and that was my route forward. As one would expect, there’s nothing special about ascending grassy tundra other than that I startled the only elk I saw all weekend in a hidden, upper basin. I tried something while passing the elk that I had read about a few weeks ago.

When you stop to look at wildlife, predominantly larger animals, they note your movement as stopping. Their prey drive then kicks in and they remain on high alert until eventually, they flee. I kept walking up hill watching them but never stopping. The lower elk did take a few steps uphill towards the other, but neither fled. They watched me and as I crested the ridge, the uphill elk went back to eating. So maybe there is something to that nugget of wisdom.

The summit ridge of 13,179’, as short as it was, consisted of upturned, volcanic mason jars interlaced with small, loose plate rock. It may have been class 2+. However, six feet west, and the rock instantly turned to 4^th class. It was an interesting summit for sure and despite it being unranked, was second favorite summit of the weekend. We woke the next morning and wasted little time in getting ready.

Granted, there was only one objective for the day (13,308’), we wanted to be driving down the road early enough before the carnival lights of incoming Jeeps and the ungodly mating calls of side by side’s ruined the afternoon/evening. We started up the steep and dusty trail climbing a stream of sunlight into the dawn. We still had thoughts of the moose and her calf from the prior day. So we kept a lookout for them in the willows.

At the upper plateau next to Point 12,528’ (the scraggy sharks fin of jumbled rock as seen from the trailhead), we dog-legged right and started out across the grassy tundra and through the willows. The slope to reach the false summit is absolutely massive, in typical La Garita fashion. It’s just a class-2 slope that can easily be viewed from camp.

However, what I will say, and this made the ascent rather enjoyable as opposed to normal circumstances, is that the butterflies were so profuse and excitable, at times, it gave the impression of wading through sunset tidal pools. The ground rippled with butterfly wings as if swaying on the tides. I wore a perpetual smile as we swam our way to the false summit.

On the descent to the saddle, there is an absolutely massive slab of rock/cliff that creates a little vertigo. Looking down this thing, I couldn’t help to think, how amazing this feature would be to top-rope or climb. But man, it would take some effort to haul a line this far backcountry just to run laps on a 60m-70m wall.

Regina kept trekking up the other side while I detoured with Kaiah over to a mellow cornice so that she could roll in the snow to shed some of the massive heat that was baking the land. It was hot, real hot. Despite applying a 46” base of 70 SPF sunscreen, we still got sunburned.

The summit plateau of 13,308’ is so big, one could simultaneously play a game of football, rugby and watch military formations unfold and still have room. Gaia has the center of the plateau as being the highpoint. But Listsofjohn.com has the highpoint at the far northeastern end towards the ridge. Visual inspection confirmed this as well. We sauntered over there and sure enough, a small cairn and register existed. We stayed long enough for a quick bite and for Kaiah to roll a bit in the flowers.

We descended towards the CT. I wanted to tag points 12,599’ and 12,580’. So as we got half way down the slope, I took off by myself at a half run to minimize the time Regina would have to wait for me to return to the trail.

The summit of unranked 12,599’ was as easy as it gets. It’s only 4’ shy of being ranked. But I figured the views from up there would be unique of the surrounding boughs and crests. A very large cairn and metal cross memorial was on the summit. I stayed for a few minutes and decided to descend back to the trail.

I felt guilty about making Regina wait, so I decided I would tag 12,580’ later in the summer when I start hiking the CT.

We hiked out via San Luis Pass. Weirdly, of all the times I’ve been up here, I haven’t actually been to the pass proper; not even a couple weeks ago when we did the Baldy Lejos group. We thought about adding on Point 13,030’ located on the other side of the pass, but due to the heat, neither of us wanted to continue to suffer, I’m sure the dog appreciated heading back down too. The peaks around San Luis Pass may not be a whole lot of type-A fun, but it’s always nice to be in the backcountry and remote. It’s a great way to “unplug” as there is no service back there. Plus, there’s moose, so there is that!

--Sorry about the formatting. I can't seem to figure it out on this platform.