Point 13,832 and Point 13,811
25 August
2007
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Trip Report
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Points 13,832 and 13,811 (Centennials)
Date: 25 August 2007
Climbers: Roy Donehower and Dave Gibson
Trailhead: Silver-Grizzly Gulch
Roundtrip distance: ~12.3 miles
Elevation gain: 3432'
Round trip time: 8 hours, 33 minutes
For my last completely open weekend of the summer I was anxious to get back down to the San Juans and climb some more Centennial peaks. Roy and I left Colorado Springs at 1pm Friday afternoon in my Jeep and drove nearly the same route we did we did just 6 weeks ago. After a stop for dinner at the Subway in Gunnison, we drove through Lake City and past Lake San Cristobal. Instead of turning left at the Sherman town site as we did to get to Cuba Gulch, we continued a couple miles further to the Grizzly Gulch/Silver Creek trailhead. The last few miles of the road were pot holed and rough, but just passable for passenger cars. Roy and I set up our tents in the same spot that we did with Phillip Bryant in June 2001 when we climbed Redcloud, Sunshine, and Handies. There were about 7 other groups camping at the 10,400’ trailhead Friday night. We got to sleep early and I got a great night’s sleep.
We woke up at 5 am, ate a cold breakfast, and started hiking up the Silver Creek trail at 6 am with just enough light that we didn’t need our headlamps. When we reached windy saddle between Redcloud and Point 13,561 we took a short break. Point 13,832 is visible from this saddle, but it was not yet clear to us which point it was and how we'd get past Point 13,561. A faint but easy to follow trail lead from the saddle toward Point 13,561. The trail crossed a steep scree slope under Point 13,561. The traverse across the scree slope seemed like the only Class 2 section of the entire route, the rest being easy Class 1 hiking. Once past the scree we followed a nice gentle trail on the south side of the ridge connecting Point 13,561 and Point 13,832. Just before this trail started to descend, we left it and climbed up a short moderate slope to gain the summit of Point 13,832. We reached this first summit at 9:02 am after 3 hours of hiking.
After enjoying the gorgeous views of the surrounding San Juans for 25 minutes, we continued east toward Point 13,811. The trail we had been following faded away as we approached Point 13,632 which we circumvented on the south side. Once around Point 13,632 we descended further to the 13,250' saddle between Point 13,632 and Point 13,811. From the saddle, the final ascent to Point 13,811 was gentle on grassy slopes covered with grass hoppers. We reached Point 13,811 at 10:19 am, less than an hour after leaving Point 13,832. From Point 13,832 we had a distant view of our next day's objective, Stewart Peak, 25 miles to the east.
Our return to Point 13,832 once again required descending and re-climbing twice. Along the way we passed a group of 6 ptarmigans perfectly camouflaged for the rocks. We stopped for lunch at 12:46 pm at the saddle below Redcloud. Lots of hikers were returning from summiting Redclould and a few were still on their way up. We had an uneventful hike back down the Silver Creek drainage, returning to the trailhead at 2:33 pm after 8 and a half hours of hiking. After packing up our tents, we drove back to Lake City for a big lunch/dinner at the Tic Toc cafe. Then we headed off toward Stewart Peak.