Jagged Mountain (13,839')
Route: Standard from Vallecito TH (7,900')
When: 7/4 - 7/6/2025
Stats: 37 miles, 7,800' vertical
Partner: Becca (b_esker)

This report is aimed toward normal climbers just looking for the privilege of getting Jagged done safely - not for those soloing Jagged in the dark along the way on your 10 peak linkups. I also want to use this report to encourage climbers to reverse the standard route instead of getting ropes stuck on the north face rappels.

I suck at backpacking. Peaks requiring backpacks are extra difficult for a tall scrawny chicken legged dude that sleeps and eats like garbage in the backcountry. But it is a necessary evil that I have slowly grown to enjoy more and more over time if I limit myself to 1-2 overnights a year. The key to enjoying backpacking is keeping the load light. To feel confident that I could summit Jagged, I wanted a light pack, meaning I wanted to scramble up and down everything on Jagged with no gear. I was 100% confident in my ability to do so.

On the other hand, I was not going to go out that deep in the wilderness without a partner. Becca is also 100% capable of scrambling up and down Jagged ropeless, but she was not going to let us go without a rope and gear. After much discussion, we settled on her carrying a 60 meter 7.7mm half rope, and I carried 7 cams and a handful of draws/slings. All told, it was about 6 additional pounds per pack.

July 4, 2025
Vallecito TH to Sunlight Creek camp at 11,500'
16.8 miles, 4,600'
9 hours 43 minutes

After scarfing down a gigantic breakfast at Oscar's in Durango right after they opened at 6:30, we made our way to the Vallecito trailhead on Independence Day. We started down the 0.3 miles of flat road leading to the official trailhead, legs and backs feeling fresh and full of optimism. After signing into the Wilderness register, I snapped this picture of Becca and all her confident energy before getting completely thrashed the remainder of the day.

The first 13 miles go easily and quickly. At this rate, we figured, we could continue all the way up to high camp at the 12,700' bow shaped lake, and hell, maybe even tack on Vallecito and/or Leviathan before turning in! The first creek crossing came up just above my knees, and was mid-thigh for Becca. The second crossing was shin deep for both of us. Cheap water shoes helped a bit.

Somewhere around 13.1 miles on the great trail, look to the left through a meadow for a small cairn. After leaving the trail, soon you'll find a lightly beaten down use trail through the meadow leading to Sunlight Creek. Bear in mind you cross the Vallecito well before its confluence with Sunlight Creek. After crossing the Vallecito, we hiked upstream until slowed by a tricky crossing of Sunlight Creek. The log crossing slightly downstream of the trail worked for us in both directions but was definitely heads up. Shortly after the Sunlight Creek Crossing is where the business begins.

From here on out, each hiker's head needs to be on a swivel constantly looking for the trail, switchbacks, and frequently checking to ensure you're on the GPX track. Ten years prior, I came up here like a fool by myself with nothing but paper maps and Gerry Roach's route description. I never found much of a trail, but did manage to make it to Jagged Pass. It was absolutely miserable. In subsequent years, I continued hearing comments about how the Sunlight Creek trail has improved and become much easier to follow. Confirmed. While in no way an "easy" backpack, the trail is in fact mostly there and somewhat easy to follow ~80% of the time. That 20% of the time looking for the trail and trying different spurs off trails was very time and energy intensive. We loaded two GPX tracks from the GPX Library to follow and cross reference. They were invaluable.

The middle camping zone around 11,500' is not exactly ideal any longer. I can see how it once was ideal prior to the beetle kill. It took some care to find a couple barely alive trees to set our tent near, gambling that if a deadfall tree did fall near our tent, the larger alive trees might "catch" the deadfall tree falling and spare us a stabby death in our sleep. I searched around for decent flat spots far from the reach of dead trees, but there just wasn't much good real estate. At our camp site we found a really old horseshoe nailed into a dead tree, plus plenty of other signs of occasional camp use.

After the Sunlight Creek beatdown, we felt stupid for even considering we could make it to high camp - much less climb a peak. We were lucky to find a decent camp site, have camp set up, and be eating dinner by dark. We cursed the stupid, miserable approach, and Becca asked me a pointed question that would dig deep: "is THIS your idea of a good Independence Day?!". Ouch. I promised we would chill and celebrate next year in Lake City on America's 250th (after a quick climb of American, of course).

With day packs loaded and food stashed in the bear can 100 yards away, we pretended to get some sleep that night, with the anxiety of climbing Jagged dancing through our heads all night. I think we got a couple of hours of sleep each. Good currency for climbing the hardest of the highest 100 peaks in Colorado!

July 5, 2025
Jagged Peak from 11,500'
~5 miles, 2,600'
9 hours 26 minutes

Go time.

We set off from camp with daypacks toward Jagged the next morning. Simply getting up into the upper basin was one of the biggest challenges of the day. Both GPX tracks we downloaded were pretty concurrent up to our camp site, but for the remainder of the climb into Jagged's basin, they varied wildly. I remembered finding segments of trails above treeline during my last visit, but we located even fewer trail segments on this trip. There may be a decent approach trail the entire way into the upper basin, but we couldn't find it. Basically just pick your way up and generally right once you exit the willows. Use your head and don't focus so much on finding a trail.

After a slow approach, we eventually took a break at the 12,700' lake to filter water and study the route from below. From there, we contoured just above the swampy, marshy tundra to some intermittent snow and talus fields, which we used to climb up to the start of the climb a little south of Jagged Pass. We joined the little climbers trail that traverses from Jagged Pass, followed it until snow blocked passage, and improvised scrambling 2nd and 3rd class rock to land at the base of the climb.

Over the past dozen years, I have read every single trip report and conditions report on this site for Jagged. Thank you all for your contributions, they were so helpful in helping us walk through the moves in our head and visualize the route before we even got there. Extra big thanks goes out to Adam Blocki (ablocki on 14ers.com), whose video trip report we found to be perfect for helping us memorize the entire route from our couch weeks in advance.

The beginning of the route is easy to locate, but determining the correct way to go up is a little more tricky. Straight up the crack system a ways we located a rappel anchor we would use on the way down, however this was not the easiest route. About half of the way up the crack system, we pulled up and left over a tricky class 4 step up onto a left angling ramp. The moves were clean, but right above is the ball bearing scree referred to in many route descriptions.

Past the first crux area, the route deposits you on grassy and gravelly ledges that zig zag next to the snow gully on climbers left. When things get harder than 3rd class, there is an easier way. Eventually you can't go up any higher and reach the "tidy saddle" referred to in route descriptions. A lingering snow patch slowed progress here. I took a step onto the crumbling snow and decided we might as well use the rope and protect the crossing since we had the gear. I built a quick 2 cam anchor for Becca to belay on, placed a small cam halfway across the snow patch, and then slung a block backed up by a cam on the other side. The snow allowed for decent kick steps and only collapsed a couple times on either side of the snow patch. The protection was probably overkill, but it gave us the peace of mind to continue.

Across the snow patch, we quickly packed up gear and continued a short way to the 2nd crux. This one has two options- the standard wide crack straight ahead, or alternately you can step around right of the wide crack and shimmy through a little awkward squeeze that deposits you at a short step up move. We took the latter, alternate option up and down and felt very secure on it. This was the only crux we did NOT rappel on the descent.

Atop the second crux, we continued zig zagging up steep grassy patches until reaching the 3rd crux, which also offers two options. We took the right/western option up the section that Roach calls "shorter, less exposed, harder and easier to protect" and found it very comfortable. At the top of this section, it was a short climb up to the notch offering passage to Jagged's sunny backside. We took a nice break here and noted the fresh webbing and carabiner we could use to rappel crux 3 nearby.

Crossing into Jagged's south side gave us a shot of energy that we needed to finish the climb. The sun and southern exposure meant the end of snow and water on the ascent, but we still had two more obstacles on our mind: the exposed step around moves, and the chimney moves on crux 4. It seems like many reports gloss over the step around move, perhaps because it is not as difficult as it is a mental game. I did want to note what appears and sounds like a bomber old piton that could be used to protect this section on the near side of the step around. I'm curious if anyone knows the history of this piton?

The step around section offers two options (noticing a theme here?): You can walk straight across the insanely exposed moves (behind Becca in the photo below). Alternatively, you can step left into a little squeeze section (piton in horizontal crack at waist height on left side), bypass several of the main exposed moves, step back right and do a short 3rd/4th class downclimb through a little slot until reaching a slightly teetering boulder that you MUST step on in order to exit and keep it under 5th class. If you blew the move of knocked the boulder out, you'd still face the same ridiculous fall as the step across, but you're in danger for much less time. We took the squeeze and slot and were happy to be exposed for less time, but it still felt trippy making that step down and around!

A little more traversing on ledges led us to the final crux! Becca went first and had to try a few different positions and hand her backpack to me before figuring out the sequence. I found the moves incredibly fun and not too difficult due to being 6' 1", but I think the 5.2/5.3 rating is height dependent with shorter folks having a more strenuous chimney sequence. We were happy that this section has little exposure.

Just a short way to go! A few minutes of fun, solid class 3 scrambling led to the summit and my Centennial finisher :)

OPINION: Reversing the standard route to descend Jagged is far more safe and fun than rappelling off the summit. The rope pulls are all clean and mindless. You have already done the route so you are familiar with the terrain and will not get cliffed out. The summit bolts are set so far back from the lip that a ton of extending material is necessary just to pull the rope. A proper summit rap requires 2 ropes instead of the 1 60m. Considering how many things could go wrong if you aren't 110% confident with your rope management skills, I highly suggest most climbers reverse the route and enjoy the series of shorter, fast, fun rappels to minimize risk and increase the odds of success.

We lounged on the spacious, comfortable summit for a while enjoying the incredible views, soaking in the climb, and preparing for the descent. The plan was to evaluate downclimbing each crux but opting for a rappel if there was any doubt about downclimbing. Just above the last crux chimney we located an old, worn rappel anchor with two functioning but ratty pieces of webbing and a quick link. Becca wanted nothing to do with downclimbing the chimney, so she prepared the rope while I added a new strand of webbing around the pinch and threaded the old link. While setting up the rappel, we ran into Lyle from Boulder, who was casually day tripping Jagged from Vallecito in trail runners! Insane! The 25'-30' rappel drops you between crux 4 and the step around moves.

Back on the north side of Jagged, we could see the rappel anchor for crux 3 right away. I wanted to downclimb, but Becca convinced me to set up the rappel anyway since we had the rope, and the anchor looked brand new, although had no ring, link or carabiner. I sacrificed a locking carabiner here to quickly set up the rap. We were down in no time after a fun rappel with an easy pull. The rap anchor for crux 2 couldn't be found, but we both felt fine downclimbing what we felt like was the easiest of the cruxes. Back at the snowy crossing, Lyle had already passed us again on the descent a while ago, but his two additional sets of packed in foot steps packed in the snow enough that we felt fine walking back across without a belay. We felt a little silly busting the rope out earlier, but whatever.

The remaining downclimb went quickly, and we eventually located the crux 1 rappel anchor with brand new cord and ring to our left. At this point I was having a blast on these rappels, so we didn't need to have a discussion about whether to rap - this one looked like the longest and funnest one, anyway! With our 60 meter, we were able to ride this all the way back to the base of the climb where we stashed our trekking poles upright in the snow. We landed at this spot about 20 minutes after Lyle did - pretty quick!

Back on solid tundra! We did it!!! Now for the long, slow hike back to camp. We hung out at the 12,700' lake again to filter water and revel in the peak we just climbed.

On the hike down, we again never found any evidence of trail segments lasting more than a couple hundred feet. Plenty of gorgeous wildflowers and Weminuche views slowed us down, but we made it back to camp with a few hours of daylight to spare.

July 6th, 2025
Sunlight Creek camp at 11,500' to Vallecito TH
16.2 miles, 500' vertical
7 hours 53 minutes

Armed with recent memories of where the trail is located, we made a little quicker work and far fewer wrong turns on the way down Sunlight Creek. It was already HOT this morning so we had to take a handful of water breaks and another longer break back at the Vallecito crossing to filter more water and pound some calories. Here we ran back into another lady we had crossed paths with on the hike in who had spent two nights by Sunlight Lake climbing 13ers around there.

The Vallecito trail was a lot busier today, and we chatted with many couples, individuals and families on the way back, which helped to pass the time and make the march out less painful. Either way, you can't avoid that feeling the last few miles of a long backpacking peakbagging weekend where your back and neck are in pain, legs feel like concrete and you just want cold beers and hot food as soon as possible.

In summary, Jagged was Becca and my favorite peak climb in Colorado to date, and a very special experience to share together. 5.2 - 5.3 felt right - if the climbing is any harder, there is an easier way. Everyone has different comfort levels climbing this type of terrain, so be honest with your abilities and pack accordingly. I highly suggest reversing the route on your descent if you plan to rappel, if for no other reason so that you only have to bring one 60m and can have a higher chance of getting the summit safely. Thanks for reading!