Plans for this hike started to get hatched the first day I moved to Durango. On my first ride in Durango I rode up to Purgatory, the ski area. There is one spot along the road where the trees part and offer a view of several amazing peaks. This is essentially the view and the peaks that I wanted to tackle:
I took off from work at 1:00 and was hiking by 1:45. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. All I knew was that I wanted to climb Sunlight Peak and Windom Peak, they were located in Chicago Basin, and that a trail heading into Chicago Basin started at Purgatory. I knew I was in for it when 20 minutes into the hike I came across two guys who were hiking out and they told me that it would take "about two days" for me to get to Chicago Basin. I had six hours until dark. That conversation motivated me and I began to jog, full pack and all, whenever the trail was flat and smooth enough. It turned out to be 17 miles into the basin. I made it with just enough time to setup a tent and to gather some water for the next day before it got dark.
Looking into Chicago Basin.
View from my tent door as the sun started to set.
I woke up at 4:30 the next morning, boiled some water for instant oatmeal, and was hiking by 5:00.
I made it into the upper basin just as the first hints of light appeared. My first peak, Sunlight is just to the left of this picture.
After a long scramble up a steep, loose gully I made it onto a ridge just below the summit of Sunlight and to this view, as the sun rose.
After one of the more technical scrambles that I have done I made it to the summit of Sunlight.
I definitely did a bit of praying to the prayer flags on top of Sunlight to see myself down through the upper technical part of Sunlight and back into the basin. It must of worked because I was off of Sunlight and to the top of Windom Peak in no time. This is a view from the top of Windom looking back at Sunlight.
After descending off of Sunlight, I side-hilled along the upper part of the basin until I reached to ridged up to Windom Peak. The ridge up to Windom was relatively quick and easy. The view back to Sunlight was fantastic.
After Windom, I descended to the base of the upper basin and was content to head back to pack up my tent and head home even though it was only 9:30. However, I ran into another hiker before getting too close to my tent and he thought that it would only take me under two hours to summit the third 14,000 foot peak in the basin, Mt. Eolus. That was enough to convince me to try it. Here is the view back to Sunlight and Windom from about 3/4 of the way up Eolus (Sunlight on the left, Windom in the middle).
The climb up Eolus was one of the scariest things that I have done. The gravity of the situation set in when I was spending a lot of time walking on a two or three foot wide granite slab that was sloping down towards a couple hundred foot cliff and I realized that the only thing that was keeping me from dying was the friction between my shoes and the rock. I was too freaked out to get any pictures on the upper part of the mountain; I just wanted to get up and get down. The summit was achieved and I made it back to my tent around 12:45. I grabbed some more water out of the creek, packed up my tent and was headed for civilization by 1:15. The hike out was a bit of a death march. I ran when I could but I was exhausted. After just over 6 hours I made it back to the car in a downpour.
In all, I hiked around 40 miles, bagged three peaks, and got to sleep in the backcountry in 30 hours. My feet hurt.
No comments:
Post a Comment