White Rock: It's Tedious

We had plans, such glorious plans.

“man plans, god laughs”

First: For those that have tagged both White Rock and White Benchmark on the same hike, kudos to you. Well done.

For years I’ve been looking at Red Mountain outside of Gothic. I’ve looked at possible routes and debated which was best. But I always kept going to back to doing a loop with White Rock, White Benchmark and a 12er point on the way to Red.

Such were the plans we made. But far more than that, we took off work on Friday to do this. Which would give us a rest day on Saturday. And Sunday would be a ridge between the Belleviews. Once all this was completed, we would only have one more peak to get for our Crested Butte list to be complete. Oh, such glorious plans.

Spoiler Alert… as if you didn’t know already, that didn’t happen.

Of the six peaks and points on the agenda for the weekend, we got one. One.

White Rock, #62 on our list.

The short version:
White Rock is a shitty hike. It’s all steep slopes and miles of boulders. We decided it is by far the worst hike we’ve done in CB. We would rather hike Golden Tops or Precarious again, then repeat this pile of loose rocks. It took way longer than expected.

With that said: I have an idea for those that want to do both peaks in one hike. See toward the bottom...
Stats at the very bottom.

The long version:

We were going to follow, Ben’s TR & track to White Rock from the west, Judd Falls. Then cross over to the east and drop down instead of that nasty ridge traverse. Head to the SE saddle to gain Benchmark, then go backdown to hike over to Red, southwest of Benchmark. Then bushwhack back to the Copper Creek trail to make this a loop. Yep, grand plans.

We camped at one the designated dispersed sites that are no longer dispersed along Gothic Road. Alarm went off at 5 a.m. and we started moving around. By the time we got ready and drove up to Judd Falls TH and started walking, it was 5:50 a.m.

That was close to our schedule. We wanted to walk the trail in the dark and have light when we got to the avy path that is the route up to Queen Basin. We had a quick snack and took off layers and headed up, just to the left of that path. The trees are spaced out better and you don’t have to deal with so many willows and small aspens in the path. (This was our second time up to Queen Basin this way.)

This route is steep. Near 11,200, we left the large trees and headed into upper part of the avy path into small evergreen trees. Still steep, but much easier than the path below this.

Near 11,500, you can see the rock wall, slope, above, and we went right to the other side of the path, into large trees again. We followed a game trail through the trees to another gully like formation which leads to Queen Basin near 11,600. There is one line of trees that blocks your view of the basin until you pass through it like a curtain. Then behold… a shit ton of boulders.

Yep, this where this hike gets tedious. So many boulders. They really won’t stop until the summit. There will be a few short stretches of other terrain, but it always goes back to boulders.

We stopped and had a quick snack. Once on the boulders, it felt like the temperature dropped. The rocks were still holder the evening temperature. The sun was just about to come up over Benchmark. When it did, it changed the temperature quickly.

More boulders.

More boulders.

Turned the corner to find some dirt and ground cover.

More boulders.

We could see the ridge and went up on loose dirt and rocks.

The ridge looked scrambly. It was for about 100 feet.

Then more boulders.

All the way to the top.

A lot of them moved which made this more tedious. You can tell very few people hike this peak.

We reached the top and were tired.

It took us 6 hours to reach the summit of White Rock. For context Ben and Whiley did it in 3:15. I thought we were in good hiking shape. But now, I feel like I was in better share in August. What the hell? They are fast as #$%^&. I thought we were making OK time, but obviously not.

I had brief thoughts that this loop was in trouble today. But, I thought we could make up some time on easier terrain.

That didn’t happen.

Had snacks. Signed the registry. Then looked down.

The summit was a loose Class 3 scramble on bad Elk rock to drop down the other side. We went down. Then the white towers were crumbly. The white dirt was loose. I went down the right side to look, no good, and a no-fall zone.

The left side, I was shocked to find so much snow still on the mountain. That crappy soft white dirt was loose enough, now it had several inches of bad snow covering it. The snow on the steep loose dirt was what gave us pause. If we could have known what was under there, it might have changed our minds. Or if we would have come up from the east side, it might not have looked so bad.

We waffled back and forth. It probably would have gone without too much trouble. Probably. Maybe. Maybe not. Ugh. We decided that wasn’t something we wanted to cross. So, we decided we would follow Ben’s route back down and to cross Queen Basin toward Benchmark’s southern saddle.

So back up the loose Elk rock to the summit. And then back down the wobbly boulders.

At one point, Staci sat down and said she just felt defeated. Yep, I felt that too. Because I knew deep down, this day was over. It was a one-peak day and our finishing plans were done for the season. But I didn’t want to say it out loud just yet.

We knocked down boulders. Some just rolled. But nothing went tumbling down the slope. Just enough movement that we had to check each rock, each step. And even then, as we moved, some rocks shifted balance. Ugh.

We finished the ridge, and went back down toward the boulders. More tedious steps.

We kept looking up at White Benchmark. And did some bad math about time, distance and gain. The math wasn’t in our favor. I even checked my water bladder. That wasn’t in our favor either.

Well, that 6 hours up and an hour plus on the summit, then the time back down took way too long. We were running low on water, stamina and desire. It was here, we finally admitted that our hiking agenda was over. It was time to go back down to the trailhead and camp.

At 3 p.m., nine hours into this sucky hike, we decided to call it a day.

Once off the boulders we took a long break, finished our pizza and ate some snacks, at the edge of Queen Basin.

My idea of the loop was done. Now I had to figure how we would hike Benchmark and Red. Together? Separate? An odd loop? An out and back? From which direction, east, west, south? Which trailhead: Judd Falls, Deer Creek, Teocalli? Too much to figure out now.

We headed back to the avy path slope and then down to the trail. The only other beings we saw were all the cows set loose for fall grazing.

But let me tell you something about cows. They like comfortable trails and care nothing about Leave No Trace. They made this ultra smooth path, just off the main Copper Creek Trail. You don’t even have to look down to miss rocks.

We saw a couple people near Judd Falls. We were the only vehicle at the upper TH. We got back to camp in time to see Avery Peak light up red with the sunset.

We finished setting up camp: canopy, gas fire pit, Camp Chief stove. We took hot sponge baths. Drank wine. And ate stew. The stew was probably an omen… Right before we walked out of the house… the stew, or about half of it, fell on the floor. Think “The Office,” Kevin, and chili. Should have known then something was going to happen.

The Idea for Getting Both Peaks:

For those that want to hike both, hike Benchmark first, from either direction. There is a gully of what looks like dirt and scree that comes off Benchmarks southern ridge and comes down in a northwest direction into upper Queen Basin. Ends near 12,200. I think it will go. At least go down. Might be too loose to climb / hike up it. But scree surf that thing all the way down. It doesn’t look like there are any significant rocks in the way. Only question… is it easy enough to get into the gully from the top. Looks OK. But those that have seen the top of the ridge would know for sure.

When I get up there, I’ll take a look and add some photos here.

The benefit of doing this… you don’t have to back track down Benchmark’s ridge and then go down and across Queen Basin. It puts you in a good spot near the turn to White’s lower ridge. It would save you time and at least one mile.

For those that have been up there, any thoughts on this route?

Back at camp, we kept asking each other what are plans were for the rest of the weekend. Our friend Megan was going to join us Saturday to camp. But what about Sunday? Do we stick to our original plans?

We decided to not hike the rest of the weekend. Which meant, we decided we were not going to try and finish our CB list this fall. We knew we had limited weekends, and probably couldn’t take off more time from work and other responsibilities.

This decision was awesome. Lists are great, but they can become a burden and remove the fun of hiking these peaks. I remember when we were getting close to finishing the 14ers, that list kept the tension up. We both kind of settled in to just camping and enjoy the views for the weekend. Next summer and fall will be fun in CB. Just a few more peaks and points to go for our “inner” ring of peaks around CB.

While at camp, I added another “point” to the list. A 12er point, just north of Avery, kind of a large fin. We could see it perfectly from camp. Not sure is Staci really gets irritated at me for adding peaks and points, but she loves to come to CB. When we first started, I think we only had 30 or 40 peaks on the list. So, I think she’ll be OK with this. Now, which trailhead to start at for this point?

The Ugly Numbers

The Trail: TH to Avy Path
9,800 to 10,450: 650 gain
5:50 a.m. to 7:25 – 1hr 35min
3.1 miles

The Slope / Avy Path to Queen Basin
10,450 to 11,600: 1,150 gain
7:30 a.m. to 8:50 a.m.: 1hr, 20min
0.7 miles
(1,000-foot bushwhacky slope in 0.4 miles)
Running Total: 3.8 miles, 1,820 gain, 3 hours

Across Queen Basin to the Turn
11,600 to 12,300: 700 gain
9:05 a.m. to 10:25 a.m.: 1hr 10min
0.6 miles
10,000 boulders
(yep, took way to long)
Running Total: 4.4 miles, 2,540 gain, 4hr 30 min

The Turn and to the Ridge
12,300 to 12,600: 300 gain
10:35 to 11 a.m.
0.1 miles
Running Total: 4.5 miles, 2,850 gain, 5hr 5 min

Ridge to Summit
12,600 to 13,523: 923 gain
11 a.m. to 12:25 p.m.: 1hr 25min
0.3 miles
Running Total: 6hr 30min, 3,735 gain, 4.8 miles

Summit Time
12:25 p.m. to 1:55 p.m.

Summit down to end of Queen Basin
1:55 p.m. 4:00 p.m.

QB to TH
4:15 p.m. to 6:20 p.m.

Totals 8.8 miles, 12hr 30 min, 3,750 gain
(nearly 3,100 feet of gain in 1.7 miles)

If you want to see some trip reports for a bunch of other CB area 12er and 13er peaks, check out our blog.