I "worked from home" Friday until about noon, then Jake and I left for Lake City. Mostly I got my gear together and packed the car... We were bound for the Silver Creek Trailhead to make camp, then get up at "O-dark- thirty" Saturday to hike Redcloud and Sunshine. After the weather chased us off Elbert the weekend before, I wanted to get an early start to make sure I had time to climb both peaks.

We tried a different route, which added about an hour to the trip to LC, including a gas/food stop. Instead of the usual 285/50 route to Gunnison, I tried 25/24/50 through Colorado Springs, just to see how it would work. It seemed that all the slow RVs on the planet were heading up 24 that day... It took us 6 hours to get to LC instead of the normal 5 - guess it's back to 285 next time.

I was curious how my car would do on the Cinnamon Pass Road to the trailhead - Roach uses the ubiquitous "passable for passenger cars" description, which can vary quite a bit, I have found. However, after reading several other trip reports, I gathered that it was driveable in my car. I thought this was a fairly easy "passable" road all the way to the trailhead, with only one spot where I had to think about the correct line. I drove past the trailhead a ways looking for a campsite, and found a very nice spot right off the road, above the Lake Fork of the Gunnison River, with a nice level spot for a tent. We had a nice view of Redcloud and Sundog, a 13er northwest of Sunshine.

Foto ©2000 by John C. Maki

I slept for a while then woke up at midnight, and went back to sleep. It was perfectly clear all night and the temperature got down to about 40. At 02:00 I woke up again, and since I was planning to get up at 04:00 anyway, and I was feeling awake, I climbed out of the bag and packed up camp. The half moon was just rising over the peak of Sundog, casting a nice light. Jake was excited and followed me back and forth to the car, but he wouldn't help carry any gear... We drove a few hundred yards to the trailhead and started up at 02:40. This is the earliest I have ever started hiking, even earlier than Longs Peak. I had to use my headlamp while in the shadow of the trees, but most of the way I navigated by moonlight. The trail is very nice all the way, rising and falling away from Silver Creek, never very steep. We hiked up to the 13,020' pass, then stared up at the northeast ridge of Redcloud. As expected, it was steep, and not a lot of fun to climb. In many places there were small pebbles like marbles on hard-packed dirt, and it was hard not to slide backwards. I dug my trekking poles in and grunted up the slope, led by Jake. At around 13,500' the trail did a little switchbacking, so it was easier to manage the climb. At 13,800' we hit a small summit and followed an easier ridge to Redcloud's summit.

Foto ©2000 by John C. Maki

We summited after 3-1/2 hours from the trailhead. Of course there was nobody to be seen anywhere, although a couple signed in on the trailhead register before me and used 7/22 as the date. I wondered if they got the date wrong, because I probably would have seen some sign of them if they had started before me. It's a nice feeling to have an entire 14er to yourself. The weather was great, no clouds or wind, just the rising sun and about 50 degrees. I pulled the summit register out of the PVC tube but as usual, it was full and people had scribbled on whatever paper they could find. I put the register back in the tube without searching for a space to call my own, and we headed down the saddle toward Sunshine.

Foto ©2000 by John C. Maki

The connecting saddle is about 1.3 miles long, dips down to about 13,500' and rises up in the last 1/4 mile to Sunshine's summit. At 14,001', Sunshine just barely made the club. I think it's kind of funny that there are a lot of perfectly good mountains higher than 13,900' but lower than 14,000', and they hardly get noticed by anyone, myself included. Maybe they're just a well- kept secret. It took us quite a while to make the traverse, since I was dawdling around in the saddle and not in any particular hurry to climb again. To me it's demoralizing to make a summit and climb down, then climb back up again. The last push to Sunshine's summit was really not that bad, but I was making it into something I didn't want to do. I finally just bore down and climbed it, tapping into my summit adrenaline to make the last few yards. I decided this would be a perfect time to take a nap, since I was feeling a little tired from the lack of sleep. Surprisingly, Jake was sleepy too, and he looked around for a place to lie down. There were lots of sharp rocks everywhere, and he gave up and stood there, eyes half-closed. I leaned against my pack and invited him to sit by me, and put his paws on my chest. He got the idea, and was soon stretched across my chest. I dropped off for 5 or 10 minutes, then decided we should probably start heading back.

The standard descent reverses the ascent and climbs back over Redcloud. Again, I found this demoralizing and once I got to the first saddle from Sunshine, I began looking around for an alternate path. I would rather slog through swamps and tar pits than climb UP again... I knew about the other route that descends the scree from the saddle and follows the drainage back to the Silver Creek trail, but it looked cliffy. I looked over to the Sunshine-Sundog saddle, and saw some scree chutes between some rocky ramparts, and a couple of them didn't look too steep. So down we went, contouring toward the Sundog saddle, with scree as far as the eye could see. There was a trail of sorts, and at first the scree was solid. Halfway down to the saddle, the trail deteriorated and the scree became loose and nasty. Jake always wants to lead, but he would become unsure of the direction to take, and just stop in front of me. I couldn't move in either direction since he would take my lead and move in the same direction, and I would knock rocks down on him. I sometimes tried to get him to pick a direction by pointing, and it worked - sometimes. Sometimes Jake let me lead. By the time we made the saddle and picked a likely scree chute to descend, THEN more scree until we found the trail at 12,500', I imagined Jake would become a scree-hatin' hound, but he never complained.

Foto ©2000 by John C. Maki

The trail entered the "enchanted forest", which is a good description. Lots of big spruce trees, wildflowers of every description, nice soft dirt on the trail, at least most of the way. Very pleasant hiking. The trail crosses an avalanche path, and becomes rocky and loose again, then back into the forest, and even becomes a bit overgrown. It dropped us out onto the Silver Creek trail, and we continued down after snapping a shot of Handies Peak from the perspective of the creek. You can see the white rocks that border the creek - some kind of mineral in the creek had discolored the rocks.

Foto ©2000 by John C. Maki

After giving Donna the traditional "I'm still alive" phone call from Lake City, we drove down the Engineer Pass Road to recon the Matterhorn Creek Trailhead for a future Wetterhorn climb. Another "passable" road, the North Henson Creek Road splits off Engineer Pass Road toward Matterhorn Creek, but it was a lot rougher than the "passable" Cinnamon Pass Road. There were 2 or 3 tricky spots, and I scraped bottom on two of them on the way up to the trailhead, but picked a better line on the way down and avoided scraping. I decided that I could manage the road in my car if later this summer I decide to tackle Wetterhorn. Even if you park before the tricky spots, you're still within about .5 mile of the trailhead.