July 30th, 2016 This was a longer day than Handies, with a bit iffier of a weather forecast, so once again an early morning. Coffee was delivered at 5:30 and we were moving by 6:10. We started out in the woods and then along Silver Creek. I spotted the turnoff for the northwest face route on Sunshine that I was planning on descending. Once we got into the large basin on the north side of Redcloud the views opened up. We took a short break before the last steeper uphill to the ridge. From there we were almost completely on talus and scree. They had re-routed the trail away from some probably pretty unpleasant steep rock with a bit of gravel on it, but the detour they made was too gradual or too poorly delineated so it has turned into a maze of anastomosing eroded tracks heading too steeply up the slope. Once these rejoined the ridge the going was easier. I packed my water bottle with snow at a lingering cornice drift since I didn't know how long it would be until we saw water again. We made it up to the chilly and windy 14034 foot summit of Redcloud Peak around 9:30 am.
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From here we had some options. One was for Nalumon to retrace our steps while I continued on to Sunshine. If the weather was more threatening I would have argued for that, but the traverse didn't look too bad and she had the fourteener fever, or at least a mild desire. The weather was sort of threatening all day, but the activity was sort of off in the distance rather than heading right at us. So we continued along the 1.5 mile ridge with about 500 feet of elevation loss and gain. This trail was pretty mellow although rocky and we made decent time until we had to head uphill again. Things slowed down but we made the 14.001 foot summit of Sunshine Peak around 10:45. We spent more time here before retracing our steps a bit and then dropping off the west side down a pretty obvious trail in the talus (the rocks were pretty loose but larger than I wanted to scree ski). We had discussed this descent with some other people at the top and some had gone ahead of us. They got to one steep dropoff we couldn't see completely from the top and after a while headed back up the slope. We were half way down at that point and I was wondering what we had gotten into. I was pretty sure I could get down anything there, but I didn't know about Nalumon. In any case we most assuredly did not want to head back up at this point, so down we went. It wasn't immediately obvious which chute down would be the best one, but I spent some time looking at the map and photos on my phone and determined which one they suggested and down we went. It wasn't much fun but sure wasn't anything that would have sent me or Nalumon back up a thousand foot slope. From here we had a lot of talus before we got off the rocks and were able to start following a trail. Some other people came down behind us and they came down the next chute west of the one we came down and said it was no problem either.
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We took a food break and then continued on down the trail as the forces of Mordor gathered behind us (some really black threatening clouds). This is where the thunder started too. We were down in the valley though so more concerned about getting wet. Back on the main path we tried to pick up the pace a bit but not really by much. There were a few drops but we made it back around 3 before the rain really started coming down.
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Summary of July 30, 2 14ers, about 10.5 miles, 4,300 feet of elevation gain, thunder and threatening rain.