Lake City 13ers - American Peak, Jones Mountain A, Pt 13, 832 Pt 13, 811, Pt 13,632

October 17-19, 2020

American Peak 13,806'

Jones Mtn A 13,860'

Pt 13,832'

Pt 13,811'

Pt 13,632'

We drove and arrived in the beautiful American Basin around 11 am. Since we did not want to drive 4wd roads with Hazel, we chose to climb American Peak and Jones Mtn from American Basin via the Patriot couloir except in summer conditions. We hiked up and around Sloan Lake, eyeing our gulley. Patriot would be a fun snow climb, but without snow it is loose gravel and loose talus. We stayed on the left side of the gulley and found a bit of more stable rock. From the saddle we turned left and climbed to American Peak. 

We turned back to the west and headed for Jones Mtn.  The traverse across the scree field on the south side of American Peak took over an hour. We went a little low; nothing too hard but it was just time consuming and slow. Once at the saddle, the class 3 scramble up to the Jones Mtn summit was fun and straight forward. Due to time and wanting to get back to Mom and Hazel at the trailhead, we chose not to continue on to Niagara Peak. 

We descended the west side of American Basin down a frozen but not snowy gulley. It was dangerous frozen and without microspikes but it would have been okay in summer. 

We stayed in Lake City and the following day went to the aptly named Silver Creek trailhead to climb Pt 13,832', Pt 13,811' and Pt 13,632'. The wind was blowing around 40 mph when we got to the ridge between the 13ers and Redcloud Peak. The area is beautiful. Mostly class 2 hiking with some side hilling on talus slopes. Made all peaks today and got down to less wind!

On our way home, we made a stop at Hartman Rocks in Gunnison and did a short hike. It's a beautiful area and would be fun to visit for a weekend of biking, hiking and climbing.