Chicago Basin (Windom and Sunlight) (14er)

Chicago Basin

The weekend of July 4th, I scrambled to get my work done after some catastrophic failures in the office. This allowed me to venture off into the wilderness and test my mountain survival skills in the Chicago Basin.

I took off directly after work on Friday and drove 6 hrs to reach Durango, Co. Here I slept in a Wal-Mart parking lot and logged into work to make sure nothing was still burning down. In the morning, I hopped on the D&S NGR (Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad). The train is still solely powered by coal and steam and makes a trip up to Silverton every day. After having my pack stored in a boxcar, I sat in an open traincar and pulled out of the cowboy town. The train chugged slowly at a 10mph pace through lots of farm land and beside a slow meandering river. Eventually we gained altitude and the landscape narrowed. The river turned into a raging torrent, flowing thru narrow box canyons. The train continued its course north through the steep and lush green valley for 20 miles, until we reached the spot where I’d get off.

Needleton was the stop and there was a group of hikers looking for a ride off of the mtns. I bailed off the train, grabbed my pack, and set off across the suspension bridge to the basin. The trail wound its way besides “Needle Creek” the whole way up into the Chicago basin. The trail gained a couple thousand feet and snaked its way through the valley for about 6 miles. This was one of the few times were in Colorado where I experience humidity as thick as swimming in water. I ended up going through 3 liters of H2O. After 3 hrs of hiking, I made it to base camp. I unrolled my bivy, refueled, and hung a bear bag.

With lots of daylight left, I scoped out the area to see what I should do the next day. I followed the trail higher and was greeted by a pack of mountain goats. The entire basin was full of them. I then hiked even higher to the base of the Twin Lakes area and watched the sun burn out on the mountain peaks. As I made my way down, I stumbled upon another family of goats. This time I almost stepped on a baby goat. Catching myself before crushing/kicking the goat, I sat down on a log and goats relaxed beside me. They made their way by milling and chewing on plants, spending a good 20 mins hanging out with me. The goats ended up chilling about 5 feet away for most of the time. The baby goat was cute, but the Mama look haggard and needed its winter coat brushed out badly. On my way to my bivy sack, I noticed a strange group of tents and voices. I wandered closer and noticed that I had found Ben, Amanda, Bruce and Garret. They had just finished coming down Eolus. I went back gathered my belongings and decided to camp with them (for fear of goats). During the evening, the goats were heavily on the prowl for salt. They would stalk you every step, if you left to go take a pee. They would whine and jump all around camp in anticipation as well.

Now in a large group, I decided to do the climbs of the 2 remaining 14ers instead of hiking Columbine pass. We awoke at 5:30am and were on the trail at 6, making our way up to the Twin Lakes and to Summit of Windom. The hike traversed across several snow fields and had some fun rock scrambles. I led the rock ledges, because I enjoy the route finding. We all made our way to a saddle below Windom and applied sun screen as the sun had begun to creep over the ridge. Here we pushed and scrambled up the ridge to the blocky summit.

We all took lots of fun pictures. I even found a surprise someone left in the registry tube.

After the pictures, we all went back down to the saddle. Here Bruce, Ben, and I set off around the side of the snow bowl towards sunlight. We circled around to a chossy red gulley with lots of scree. Using axes and delicate feet movements, we ascended the gully to the ridge blocks. Here we navigated some 3rd class ridges and rabbit holes to reach the top, while picking up an additional old man hiker along the way. At the top all seemed clear few a few seconds. But as soon a Ben hopped the summit block, the mountains gods began pushing a storm to us. Quickly, Bruce and I scurried up the block. (the block is 3 large boulder formation which is wedged against each other. One must jump across each boulder top to reach the Summit. Below you is a large 20 crack and to any side are 1000ft drops. So if you mess up, you’re pretty much dead.) I was the last to leave to make sure I could get a good picture of the approaching storm.

After leaving the summit, I further honed my skill of staying alive and avoiding mortal peril. Knowing that the mountain axes are essentially lightning rods and lightning strikes are genetic (thanks dad), I flew down the scree field. Soon we were all above a snow gulley. We leapt into the snow gulley and slid rapidly to the bottom, maintaining control with the axes. From here, it was a dead run back to tree line and base camp ( I still refuse to admit that I can run to Ben.)

Safe at camp, the storm opened up while we ate and napped for a couple hrs. Around 3pm, we packed up and made our way out of the basin. Knowing that I had no chance of catching the train that day I hiked out with the group (a bad choice.) The hike out was a grueling-self-loathing-agonizing death march along the same river that the train followed. I blacked out while hiking several times and somehow destroyed my ankles. At dusk we made camp a couple miles from the end saving the finally push for morning. At this point my body had shutdown and I fell asleep cold, sweating, overheated, and shaking. Next morning we trotted out while Bruce, Ben and Garret had a great discussion on politics ( I blacked out again and dreamt of fishing the creek below). After a couple more hrs, we were out at the purgatory trailhead. I immediately disrobed and loitered around the parking lot in clean and dry underwear a glorious feeling. All was good. In the end, I ended up hiking 30 miles and 10000ft elevation in just over 2 days.

From here I went back to my car in Durango and back to the springs. Everyone else went to Pagosa Springs and Wolf Creek to hunt for geodes.

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