Tom Grundy's Mount Sneffels Page

July 25th, 2016. Actually just getting to the trailhead was a bit of an ordeal. The PLC was unable to maintain power up the steepish but decent gravel road (even in reverse), so we parked on the side of the road and all piled into my truck in the morning (except Nalumon, who wisely slept in). We had to park and walk up the 4wd road anyway, which is a whole lot less fun than a trail, especially when noisy smelly vehicles are passing you. It looked like Toyota and little lawn mower ATVs were the most common vehicle at the upper Blue Lakes / Yankee Boy trailhead.

The day started out quite nice, here Sam is reflected in a puddle

Once we were on the trail things were a little quieter. This is a pretty popular peak though and it was far from a solitary wilderness experience. We hiked up the trail and then up a long talus/scree slope to the turn into a gulley. There was some snow here and one group had a rope. There were some kicked steps and some of the snow was soft enough to kick your own steps. We passed a lot of people here. Then things got a bit scrambley but not overly technical up to the final 14,150 foot summit. This was small enough to be quite satisfactory with a huge dropoff on the north side but with enough space for everyone that was up there. Bonus trivia - Sneffels was named after the volcano in "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" by Jules Verne. We did the usual pictures although we had a few more props like a Leki chair and the YogaSlackers flag.

lots of people heading up the snow

Sam tests out the Leki chair and waves the YogaSlacker flag

The weather got more threatening as we descended. The snow was steep and scary enough not to just glissade but once we got to the scree field we were able to boot ski down most of it. Raquel even got into the spirit and started to embrace the slide. Once we got back to the road it was more of a sloggy descent, and then the rains came. It came down pretty torrentially and we got mostly soaked before making it back to the truck. From there we shuttled down to the PLC and then headed into Ouray to find Nalumon (engaged in a laundry mission). After lunch Sam and Raquel had to leave to catch a flight out of SLC and Nalumon and I headed in the direction of Telluride to the Wilson group.

we were glad to have the poles on the descent

panorama from the summit looking southish through west to north

Summary of July 25 one 14er, about 7.8 miles, 3350 feet of elevation gain, some snow, some scrambling, lots of talus skiing, and a rainy soaking.

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