After departing from Castle Peak, Sarah, Pete and I traveled down to Silverton and scouted out some possible 13,000 feet peaks to climb on Friday. We found a camping spot on county road 22 right by the Animas River and while sleeping, Dwight and Kevin arrived near midnight.
The next morning the weather didn’t look great, but we decided to set out anyway, hiking up to the road and finding the barely-there trail that Pete had noticed the night before. Near an old wrecked car we doubled checked the maps and soon found the trail leading up Hermatite Gulch.
The clouds would occasionally part enough to reveal the peaks to our south: King Solomon Mountain, Galena and Green Mountain.
Around 11,600 feet we hit the snow line from the recent weather and trudged on towards Hermatite Lake. We spotted a coyote running across some snow fields at the head of the basin.
From near the lake we headed southwest to climb up to a ridge leading towards our first peak of the day: Macomber Peak.
The right edge of the ridge ended in huge cliffs leading straight into Hermatite Basin. We stayed well back from this demarcation as we climbed upwards.
After a brief break on the summit of this unranked peak, we headed north to follow a ridge towards Tower Mountain.
Along the way we picked up a set of fresh coyote tracks and followed them right to the summit of Tower where the coyote had marked its territory on the summit cairn.
From the summit we headed east and then north to a saddle that would give us access to Cataract Basin.
I started to kick steps down the snow slope after verifying that the new white snow hadn’t formed any cohesive slabs. It hadn’t bonded well to the older snow which was covered with a dust layer, but winds had been light and only a couple inches had fallen. Once in the basin we tried to traverse below a jagged ridge line towards Dome Mountain but found walking in a white out difficult. The leader would stagger like a drunken sailor since you couldn’t distinguish the sky from the ground and never knew where your next step would go.
We ended up descending another 100 feet to slightly less steep ground and then finished our traverse below a saddle to the west of Dome. Then it was straight up to the ridge ending with a short 5 foot old cornice wall to climb.
Once on the ridge we found ugly loose and wet rock to climb all the way to Dome’s summit.
After signing the register and commenting on the awful weather, we started back to the saddle. Strangely, we found the rock easier to descend than climb up. Maybe the slightly clearing sky helped our moods?
Several glissades took us down into Cataract Basin where we explored a rock formation near the lakes.
Then we followed the stream’s path as it descended into Cataract Gulch. At first we mostly dealt with loose scree and talus but less than a 1000 feet from the Animas River we found a tight gorge had been carved by the river. Breaking all wilderness travel protocol we ended up splitting up with Dwight finding a class 3 downclimb on the east side of the gulch, while I took a class 4/low 5th route down mostly solid and dry rock (which is to say some was loose and wet), while the others found a largely class 2 route high and west of the creek.
Once down safely and imprudence of splitting up was argued we returned to camp and headed into Silverton for dinner. When we walked into Handlebar’s our conversation with the waitress went something like:
Waitress: Are you all bikers or runners?
Us: No.
Waitress: Well, what are you?
Us: Hikers I guess.
Waitress: Well, you must be extreme hikers. You’re all so lean you look like you run the Hardrock 100.
I wasn’t sure if she meant it looked like we’d just finished the Hardrock 100 (100 mile footrace around here later in the summer). Did we really look that bad? Or did we just look like potential competitors?
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Great pictures!