Andy’s Los Alamos Blog

Let me tell you about the Chicago Basin.

It’s in southwest Colorado, near Silverton. The only access to it is via a steam train, a tourist attraction running between Durango and Silverton, that happens to stop in the middle of nowhere. There are no roads. There are no cell towers. Nothing but trees and mountains and the people who love them. The train drops you off at what used to be Needleton, but isn’t a “-ton” any more; it’s a wooden bridge and a fast, clear river. Needleton is about 8,000 feet up. You hike about eight miles into the basin, along a narrow, winding path following the river as it snakes down from the mountains rushing away last winter’s snow. Eventually, you reach the basin at 11,000 feet. Mountains start peeking out above the trees, up where the clouds should be, still snow-covered in July. Nothing can describe the scale of this landscape. Everything is mind-blowingly vast and tall and green. Saturday afternoon, we hiked in, chose a camp site near a cold and vigorous stream of snowmelt, fed by the waterfalls and tributaries up the basin, and prepared for adventure.

Sunday morning, we awoke a 4:00 a.m. and hiked toward Mt. Eolus by the moonlight. By dawn, we had overcome the 1,000 foot headwall, and began our ascent. We soon encountered snow, whereupon I was trained in the use of an ice axe. Always wanted to use one of those. Within a few hours, having gained a few more thousand feet, we arrived at a peculiarity of Eolus, the “catwalk.” This forms a bridge between Mt. Eolus and North Eolus (its nearest neighbor), at places a meter wide with a hundreds-of-feet drop on each side; this was somewhat disconcerting. The final climb to the summit of Eolus consists of class 3 and 4 rock climbing. The classification can be tricky sometimes; it factors in both techincal difficulty and exposure (i.e. an easy move becomes dangerous if there is danger of a long fall). In my opinion, there was a lot of exposure. As a novice mountaineer, this was a trifle terrifying at times. The summit, however, makes it worth it. It’s 14,084 feet up. You can see the entire world. Hundreds of miles of mountains and basins, lakes and snow. There are no cities and no roads to be seen. There is no cell service. I had only imagined that places like this still existed.

North Eolus is right next to Mt. Eolus, and an easy climb from there. We quickly reached the summit, took in the view, and headed back toward camp. I learned another important mountaineering skill, the glissade, wherein one sits and, steering with feet and ice axe, slides down a snowy hill; like skiing without the skis… and sitting down…

We reached camp in the early evening, finding it surrounded by mountain goats who didn’t seem to care much about us, devoured our freeze-dried backpacker dinners, and headed to bed early.

Monday morning again found us awake at 4 am, hiking in the cold, dark mountain morning by headlamp and moonlight. Today we headed for Windom and Sunlight peaks. At the top of the headwall are the Twin Lakes, still largely frozen over in July. Beyond these lakes is a vast snow field, still clinging to life in the summer heat, yet bringing the basin to life with its meltwater (there is a constant subtle roar in the valley. It sounds at first like traffic, but there aren’t any roads. It is the river flowing down the basin and the countless streams and waterfalls that feed it.). Yesterday, we had turned left here, headed toward Eolus. Today, we turned right, into what was at this time of morning a field of ice. At times using our ice axes to cut steps into the ice for ourselves, we slowly progessed toward Windom. We were soon out of the basin, hiking and climbing up through the peak’s slope of increasingly large rocks. By late morning, we had reached our third or four 14,000 foot summits. Windom peak is 14,083 feet. It offers an unparalleled view of the Chicago Basin, and the ranges beyond. There wasn’t any cell service here, either. After a short time at the summit, we headed onward to Sunlight Peak, reportedly the scariest summit of the Colorado 14′ers (14,000+ ft. mountains). Contouring along the softening snow field of the basin between Windom and Sunlight (see pictures), we eventually began our ascent, starting with a long climb straight up the snowy side of Sunlight. Reaching the rocks nearer the summit, we found an interesting terrain blending hiking, class 4 (and occasionally 5, when we made our own routes) rock climbing, and snow. It was wonderfully challenging and exciting. Upon reaching the summit, we found that it lived up to its reputation. The summit is a single rock, about two feet on a side, with sheer cliffs of hundreds of (perhaps over a thousand) feet on three sides. Furthermore, it is separated from you by a few-foot gap. Most people find they have to jump across it, toward the cliff. A bit of exploration led me to find a slightly better approach, using a more technical approach but avoiding the jump. It seemed safer. I made it, and there’s even a video of me doing so. Sunlight Peak is 14,059 feet, and lives up to its reputation quite well.

After regaining composure for a bit, we began our descent. We hiked through chest-deep snow, traversed long distances to maximize glissading fun, and came down along the Twin Lakes, beginning to thaw in the early afternoon sun. We hiked down the mountain back to camp, profoundly exhausted but in awe of both the mountains and our ability to conquer four of them in two days. I can only hope to someday experience such thrill again.

Back at camp, we enjoyed more freeze-dried delicacies, recounted the day, and fell asleep to the river, wind, and occasional coyote. The following morning we were on the trail by mid-morning, hiking back toward the train. We sat by the river and read and waited, time having lost much of its meaning in the woods. The train came, mostly full of tourist retirees, and was descended upon by backpackers wearing dirty clothes and tired, contented smiles.

Two and a half hours later, we were back in Durango. I had an entire pizza for dinner at a local pub. A four-hour car ride brought us back to Los Alamos, and back to reality. Please take a look at my pictures on Flickr! (coming soon). They can’t do it justice, but they try.

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For the 4th of July, we had a cookout and watched the fireworks in White Rock, NM., not too far from Los Alamos. A bit of a thunderstorm hardly slowed us down (the beginning of monsoon season unhappily coincides with early July), and we all enjoyed a great night of camaraderie, patriotism, and pyrotechnics.

Today I was back at work, and my optics stuff has indeed arrived, as I had hoped, and should be operational soon. For now, I’m doing more computer simulations and analysis.