Courtesy of 3DFlags.comWilson Peak (14,017 ft), Sawpit, Colorado

Wilson Peak (14,017 ft), Sawpit, Colorado

Hike Stats Date: September 1, 2003
Wilson Peak: 14,017 feet Base: 10,700 feet Vertical Rise: 3,317 feet
Start: 08:50 Summit: 12:15 Return: 14:50
RT Dist: ~8 miles Conditions: sunny and clear

I think I'm going to make an annual trip to Colorado during Labor Day week. This seems to be the best time to go for me. The snow has had all summer to melt off, and the winter storms haven't come yet. The summer monsoon rains would have died down by now, too. The conditions are ripe for a little fourteener baggin'.

So here I am again writing to you about my hiking. It was hard to take time off this time around! I'm gainfully employed and vacation is scarce. Actually I had to "borrow" vacation and promise to take some work with me just to get away. Yuck. I gotta retire somehow! Anyone out there want to sponsor a fourteener hiker for a year?

I'm here at Telluride for a day and decided to bag Wilson Peak. To be honest, I thought about bagging both Wilson Peak and Mount Wilson, but the logistics didn't work out that way. To be really honest, I even thought I might be able to get El Diente, but the key word there is definitely "might". So I ended up settling for just the Peak (the easier of the two Wilsons) or so I thought.

The trail started in Silver Pick Basin, but I took a wrong turn and ended up on the mesa instead. That cost me about 30 minutes of backtracking. The road was rough, but passable in a car. I had my Subaru Legacy on this trip, which has quite a bit more clearance than the Chevy Prizm. Only once did I scrape bottom while trying to power through a mud hole for fear of getting stuck. I tell ya, Subaru knows how to make passenger cars that can go offroad. I arrived at the trailhead fashionably late at 8:50 am.

My luck was incredible. Fellow hikers said that it had been raining pretty much everyday the week before. And yet the day I show up to hike it was beautifully clear, not a cloud in the sky. Things are looking up! Off I go on my quest for fourteener #20.

The trail isn't too exciting as it was mostly an old 4x4 road. I was actually a little glad that it was easy since this was my first hike on the trip. I ran into a freshly killed deer along the way.





















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