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Date: August 6, 2005
Elevation: 14,067'
Rank: 36th
Route: West Ridge, Grade II, Class 2, 7 miles, 3600ft vert.
GPS: N 38° 56.8' W 106° 22.7''
Team: Matt Esser (Toid)
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Missouri Mtn. Trip Report:
Pre-climb: Missouri has been on my to-do list now for three years. Ever since I climbed Belford, the peaks of Oxford and Missouri were in the area and still unclimbed. This summer, Colleen and I went back to Belford and climbed it and traversed over to Oxford to take that one of our lists. There are quite a few switchbacks on that trail, so I decided that if I did Missouri, I'd have to wait until the river dies down. Otherwise you have to ford Clear Creek in a submarine of sorts to get to the other side on heavy snow years like this one was. Reports on the climbing forums just started coming in that the river was only as deep as the hood of a Land Rover with a 3" lift, which meant that it *was* crossable of sorts. Snorkel gear not included.
Climb: In an attempt to do this climb right, I left Broomfield at 6:45pm on Friday night with hopes of making it to the top of the 4x4 parking by night-fall. Unfortunately, I underestimated the amount of people who (due to Highway 6 being closed) take I-70 on a Friday night to get to Central City and Blackhawk to gamble. I had heavy traffic until just past Idaho Springs. By the time I got to Leadville, the sky was completely dark and it started to drizzle. Great.
I've been to Missouri Gulch a couple times now and Winfield once, so I figured since Rockdale was on the same dirt road it would be easy to find...riiiiight. The key to finding this road is that it is unmarked. I was looking for a sign of some sort. Finding an unmarked dirt road - from a dirt road, (in complete blackness no less) wasn't exactly the easiest thing, but on the second pass back from Winfield (the end of the road), I found it.
It didn't take long to find the "river crossing" that I was most worried about. Clear Creek looked to be moving quite fast with the new rain as it reflected off the glow of my headlights. I backed off and found a place to park and decided that I'd wait until daylight to figure out how to cross as I couldn't tell how deep anything was. And I wasn't about to have my Blazer washed down some river in the middle of the night with nobody to help me get out of the potential mess!
Spending the night in the back of my Blazer was actually not too bad. I just forgot to take out things from my last fishing trip that would have helped with the space issue. I slept pretty good, waking up every few hours to check the time and the weather overhead. My alarm went of at 5am.
So I actually crawled out of my sleeping back at 6:15am when I heard a car go by and stop at the river. It was a Subaru Forester I believe and they were amazed at the amount of water on the road and in the river. The three of us got out and looked at the crossing by wading part of the way through it. It turns out that if you take a certain angle from the trees (and not the obvious crossing that's a straight shot), it's not as deep. We both agreed to wait for each other as we didn't want anything to happen to the other alone.
The Subaru gunned it across Clear Creek and made it pretty well with the water only coming up over the hood. Once they got across it was rather funny to see how the very cold water hit their hot engine and there was all this steam coming off of it. It was now my turn. I decided to just go straight across and what a mistake that was! It was twice as deep and the upstream side of my Blazer had water up to the door handle for a few seconds. Exhilarating for sure! But I made it.
Not more than a minute later we were at the second crossing and we got out to look at it, but it was only a foot or so deep, however, on the other side of the crossing is this rock that sticks a good foot out of the ground waiting to eat your oil pan for breakfast. We made our way across the river and then once across we gunned it up the steep road to get up and out of the river bed. Success! The rest of the 4x4 road was bumpy and took a while to do the 3 miles or so of road, but by 7am we were up at the 4x4 Trailhead and finally ready to begin our climb!
I said goodbye to the two guys in the Subaru who took off up the trail as I got ready. I finally got started hiking at 7:15am. I've read numerous trip reports online from people who have missed the turnoff from the pack trail up Missouri's backside. I soon reached the lake and took a picture of Huron and continued hiking. Up ahead I could see two people. I put my head down and started hiking like mad to catch up with them. Finally I caught up with them and that's when I realized I made the same mistake a lot of other people have made. They asked me, "Is this the way up Missouri or do you think this is Iowa and Emerald?" I looked back over my shoulder and back in the distance I could see the lake and the grassy slopes leading up to Missouri's West Ridge and I had to kick myself for not stopping when I made all those river crossings. I totally blew by turnoff and so did these people. Now we had a couple options. Backtrack all the way to the lake, losing all elevation gained or do what I could perceive as the worst scree climb/bushwhacking experience I've ever done to save our elevation. We all chose to backtrack to the lake. All told, about an hour and a half had passed since I last left the lake and we did find one of the trails leading up to the correct trail. However, these guys said that with the river crossing and the extra hiking down the wrong trail, they were going to call it a day as they didn't want to be high up on Missouri when the monsoon hit. I'm a glutton for punishment and continued on.
Once you find the correct trail, it leads you up steeply by this waterfall and then out into an open basin. By this point I was finally sure I had the correct trail (as opposed to one that was headed up Iowa), but it was difficult to discern the exact bump on Missouri's long ridge that was the actual summit. However, just after I realized I was on the right trail, it ended. It's both exciting and frightening to be without a trail. On one hand it takes you back to a time when the first people to climb mountains in any part of the world probably did it with no trail and so it gave me a sense of discovery. On the other hand I was already tired from taking the wrong trail earlier in the day and now it left me guessing how to best get up to the ridge, yet again without a trail.
I made my way across the basin and began the steep ascent up the grassy slope that would not end. I guess this reminds me that the shortest route up a mountain isn't necessarily the quickest. I took a break when I finally reached the ridge at 12,950ft. The clouds were starting to move in and it was starting to get late in the day. I forced myself up to the top of what turned out to be Point 13,930. The grass turned into rocks towards the end of it, but it wasn't too bad. Just steep. Once on top of Pt. 13,930, I could finally see what remained, and due to a couple hikers on the summit, I could finally tell which bump was the actual summit. I finally knew that I would make it.
The ridge turned out to be longer than it looked though. I was sailing along enjoying views of Mt. Belford and Missouri Gulch when I reached some rock towers near the end, just shy of the summit. I bypassed them to the west after dropping 50ft in elevation and then reclimbed the steep, sandy final pitch to the summit. It was slightly after noon.
From the summit, one can see many 14ers on a clear day. I lost track of them all but I know I could see all the way to Snowmass and Capitol to the west. I was hot and tired from the longer than expected morning and began my traverse back across the ridge after only 15 minutes on the summit. Once I arrived at Point 13,930 I now could point my feet downhill and begin the steep descent back to the lake. It's rather interesting psychologically to see where you need to get to, but be getting there ever so tantalizingly slow.
As I was descending the clouds blocked the sun and I thought for sure it was going to start raining. I couldn't even imagine trying to descend this slope on wet ground. I made it back down to the basin and then to treeline right where the waterfall is and I took a nap of sorts. My feet were hot so I dipped them into the water to help shrink them back down to normal size. I ate a Rice Krispie treat and slogged my way back down to the lake. I was happy to be back at the lake. About 15 minutes later I was back at my Blazer and I was loving it even more. My wife who I missed while I was hiking had prepared me a nice smoked, peppered turkey sandwich with pepperjack cheese. Oh was it yummy. However, it started to sprinkle from the ever-so dark clouds up above and I so I needed to get moving if I wanted to cross Clear Creek before it got any deeper from the rain.
Crossing the creek wasn't any big deal as I now took the correct path across it and truthfully the washed out Chaffee County 390 actually made my stomach turn more than anything. I was back on Highway 24 towards Leadville in under and hour after leaving the 4x4 trailhead.
Looking back on it all, if I were to ever do Missouri again I'd probably take the Missouri Gulch approach. Even though it is longer it is definitely not as steep. However, I had fun crossing the creek in so deep of water and Clohesy Lake is beautiful. Just don't try to cross Clear Creek too early in the year!
Pictures: (Click on picture for caption)
Time:
| Drive |
Ascent |
On Summit |
Descent |
Drive |
Total |
| 4 h |
5 h |
15 min |
3.5 h |
3.5 h |
8.75 h |
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