From: ajs@hpfcla.HP.COM (Alan Silverstein)
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 86 14:04:11 MDT
Subject: Re: Trip reports on the San Juans
Newsgroups: hpnc.general

Monday, July 14: Mount Sneffels, 14150', and Yankee Boy Basin

I drove down from Fort Collins the day before. It would have been a seven or eight hour drive but for needing to find a dentist to re-cement a lost onlay. (Stay away from jelly beans once you go bionic.) Fortunately, that finally worked out OK in Gunnison for only $15 and an hour's delay. It did cost me spending the night on top of Sneffels, though. I had hoped to get there in time to do that.

I pulled out of Ouray at 2045, getting dark. The road to Camp Bird is clearly marked a mile south of town. It's fast and auto-passable through some spectacular shelfs and overhangs up to the Yankee Boy Basin turnoff, which is also well marked. The townsite of Sneffels is 6.4 miles from Ouray. Beyond this the road gets real crummy, especially hard to drive at night. I found a left fork that finally ended 2.3 miles further up, and camped out under moonlight, stars, and light clouds, at about 11500', below Stony Mountain.

Yankee Boy Basin is a phenomenally beautiful place, despite all the roads and mining activity. Wildflowers abound and the valley is surrounded by steep mountains and gorges. The orange mine tailings actually add to the grandeur.

I was awake and on the trail at 0630. A different fork of the road continued up for maybe 1/2 mile before hitting a foot trail. This takes you up to a lovely little lake at 12200', near an old cabin, at the bottom of an upper basin. The lake was half frozen over. From here the peak is clearly visible, and the overall route obvious, but there is no definite trail around to it. Other than one party of campers who'd climbed the day before, I had the area to myself.

There are cairns up and around to the NW into a deep gully which goes NE. I cut up and over the SW ridge into the gully much higher, and avoided a lot of scree by staying close to the right wall. I reached the multicolor south saddle, 13500', at 0830. From here I chose to go up the steep main cut just E of the summit, which was snow (ice) filled starting halfway up. Fortunately there were old steps frozen into it, so it was no problem with an ice axe.

The very top of the couloir drops off sharply on the other side -- what a view! You have to descend about 20' and find a side crack that takes you to the last hundred feet up the S side to the summit. It's a small knob of a peak with a center cairn, which I reached at 0910 (2:40 to climb 2650'), under light clouds with cool breezes.

What a view! Yankee Boy Basin is awesome. You can't see Telluride, even though it's only a couple of miles away, because the mountains get in the way. There are peaks everywhere but north; that way is clear to Montrose. (Sneffels is the prominent peak you see south from Montrose.) The Wilson/El Diente massif is clearly visible to the west, and Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre to the east.

I dropped down at 1040 and was back to the Jeep by 1210 (only 1:30 elapsed), with plenty of nature-appreciation and photo stops. The weather built up fast after noon, so it was just as well.

This peak is a relatively short climb if you have 4WD, and an easy one too if steep rock doesn't bother you.