Two years after my unsuccessful Labor Day 2004 attempt in the San Miguels I went back to try again. I drove down on Sunday afternoon via Gunnison, arriving at the Navajo Lake trailhead couple of hours after dark. I slept in my car, and woke up the next morning to frost. After having some tea and cracker for breakfast I started up the trail. Being a bit later than I'd hoped, I made the decision to attempt the standard North Face route on El Diente rather than the West Ridge. This was probably a reasonable decision, but it was still rather aweful without consolidated snow holding the loose scree together. The summmit was a relief, and I looked forward to the remainder of the day. The beginning of the traverse was still, like the North Face, rather nasty and loose, but it quickly changed into difficult scrambling on reasonably solid rock. The difficulty did not let up, whether I was on the ridge crest or skirting around towers. It started to be just a bit too much fun. The last bit to Mount Wilson was as difficult as advertized. Everything was solid, but the moves were rather awkward for the difficulty and quite exposed. Not wanting loose my poise by waiting, I left the summit quickly to reverse those moves. It was, as usual, more difficult going down than up, but with some thought and patience I made it without doing anything insecure. Descending from Mount Wilson took a long time, and Wilson Peak did not look nearly as fun via the Rock of Ages saddle as I though it would, so I decided to postpone it for another day. Had I climbed it, I probably would have been at the saddle at dusk; instead I watched a glorious sunset from just above Navajo Lake, with incredible alpenglow bathing Gladstone Peak. I hiked back to the trailhead and arrived at about 9:00 pm, and headed back to Boulder.
Created by Joseph Proulx