Huron Peak - 14,003 ft

Brown's Peak - 13523 ft

UN 13044 ft

Date:  5-23-2005

Climbers: George Barnes and MarkDB

Route:  Northwest Slopes - Class 2

RT distance:  6.0 miles

RT time: 8 hours

Time to summit:   4 hours 15 minutes

Time on summit:  25 minutes

Time to trailhead: 3 hours 20 minutes

Elevation gain:  3,800 feet

Coordinates of TH:  38,58.555,-106,27.183
Coordinates of Browns:  38,57.361,-106,26.196

Coordinates of Huron:  38,56.731,-106,26.279
USGS Quadrangles:  Winfield
Topographic Map:

Trip Report:

Mark and I got a pretty casual 8 AM start after doing breakfast at the Evergreen Cafe in Buena Vista.  Unlike our last attempt, we were able to drive quite a ways past Winfield up the 4WD road.  Drifts prevented us from making it all the way to the official 4WD trailhead, but they looked to be melting out fast.

Walking up the road we noticed an immense avalanche debris field coming down one of the drainages of what we thought was Huron.  Mistaking this for the route, we ascended the debris field, which was frozen hard from the night before.  This route finding mistake, which we quickly recognized, worked out in our favor, as the standard route crossed a huge, flat field of snow that looked like it'd be post hole hell.

Instead of backtracking, we ascended to UN 13044 and continued over to Brown's Peak.  The ridge is largely snow free, but required some class 2 boulder hopping.  Once on Brown's we guessed that we could make Huron in under an hour.  There's a vague climber's trail along the ridge to Huron, but at times it was hard to follow.  From Brown's to Huron we were able to avoid snow, and soon caught the standard route to the summit.  The switchbacks and established trail were a welcome change!

Much of the summit was covered by an overhung cornice, so we were careful to stay near rocks.  We had good weather on the summit, so we took the time to enjoy leftover pizza from the night before. 

We followed the standard route down Huron for a ways, and soon discovered how fortuitous our route finding error was.  At about 12,300 the standard route crossed a vast snowfield that Mark and I didn't want anything to do with (it reminded me of the Willows on Bierstadt).  To avoid this we contoured around to our ascent gully.  The snow was softening up fast, be we got a few good glissades down the gully to the road.  We reached the truck at 4 PM, for a RT time of 8 hours.