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Important Points:
1. You can drive to within 100ft or so of the trailhead (right as it turns right up a steep, rocky, wet section.
2. Snow in the Basin is easy to walk across in the morning, but you will posthole in the afternoon. However, snowshoes would be useless, as you have to walk through willows as well.
3. There is a snow free route up the gulley just to the right of where the route on 14ers.com tells you to go. However, it is a scree route. (picture below)
4. Once you gain the ridge, there is snow up the entire slope until almost 14,000ft, and it's steep. Crampons/microspikes, and an ice axe are needed. (picture below)
5. The ridge is windy and cold, dress accordingly. It's full on summer in the basin.
6. Glissading is great between 12,000 and 13,500ft. Above that it's real steep and ends in a pile of rocks, so it might be somewhat dangerous.
Picture of the snow free route in green, and the glissades we did in red. We also glissaded above this area on the ridge some.
The ridge. Snow covered and steep. Climber in upper right.
Right at, and above 14,000ft, the ridge has snow on the east side and rocks on west. It's easier climbing the snow if it's not too warm yet. You might posthole on the way down.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
Thanks for the report. After my miserable experience attempting La Plata a couple weeks ago from La Plata Gulch, I haven‘t been feeling up to re-attempting. The Southwest Ridge looks good. I‘ll have to go again this week.
There are plenty of trip reports with pretty pictures for you to look at Kent. My point was to get out the first trip report with current road and trail conditions since we had nothing to go on when we went.
I'm glad it helped out a couple of people already! Hope it helps you out this weekend too! :D
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