Uncompahgre is one of my favorite hikes. It is remote enough, and the road is difficult enough that it doesn't attract huge crowds. The hike toward the peak is beautiful. The view of the peak is unique with it's unique large flat top. And, the final crux of the route offers up a good sample of San Juans Class 2+, which is a good test bed for the next level.
We drove to the trailhead the night before, and camped next to our car, at the trailhead. The road to the trailhead wasn't too bad. It was moderate 4WD. The only potential issue someone might have, is if they have a very long wheelbase, they might tap the belly with some of the large swales in the road. Our 4 door Wrangler had no problems. We had a small family of deer walk through our campsite later in the evening, and that was pretty neat.
We got up and started hiking around 6:30am. The trail is extremely easy to follow. The view during the initial hike is beautiful, but we could not see Uncompahgre from the trailhead. After a short hike, we were able to finally see our goal summit - directly in front of us. We made a few easy creek crossings, then kept hiking towards the west face of Uncompahgre. The hike up the west face, onto the south ridge was the hardest part of the hike, from an endurance perspective. There are a few switchbacks, just before the reaching the ridge, and those switchbacks were just exhausting. Once we reached the south ridge, we took a short break.
After our break, we headed up towards the final crux, a moderate class 2+ scramble. The scramble had multiple options. Some were closer to class 3, and some sections were loose and annoying. You just have to navigate the best path, for you style of climbing. Of the groups of people that were heading up and down this section the same time as we did, I think everyone took a slightly different option. The kids and I selected the first climbable gully. It was a bit loose, but not dangerous, only annoying, and energy draining. Once we got up the gully, the summit was in front of us, an easy hike and one last short climb. We made it to the summit in 3:10 from the trailhead.
We spent about 40 minutes on the summit, taking in one of the most beautiful views. We also made sure to take the requisite "standing on the cliff edge" photos. When we sent the pictures to Mama via text, she wasn't happy about those cliff edge pictures. Uncompahgre is one of the only easy 14ers with this type of summit photo. After some refueling and more pictures, we started back towards the trailhead.
During our ascent of the gully, I made a serious effort to take note of the gully that we came up, to make sure that we went down the same gully. As, I mentioned before, several groups were going down the other gullies, which were more to the right of the trail (on the descent). Our gully was straight ahead. We quickly descended the class 2+, and got back to the ridge. The descent of the west face was much easier than the grueling ascent. The hike out was nice, but it always seems to go forever. Ultimately we made it back to the trailhead in 5:48 from our start, and 7.2 mi roundtrip.
Uncompahgre continues to be one of my favorites. The kids did an amazing job on the Class 2+, and it was a great warm-up for our next hike, which would be their first serious class 3 (Wetterhorn Peak).
