At the end of July I ventured out for a 6-day solo backpack trek through the Needle Mountains, a remote and rugged sub-range of the greater San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado. This was the seventh trek I’ve done in this specific range (not counting other nearby trips within the Weminuche Wilderness), though it has actually been six years since my last visit. But it felt wonderful to return here and to rekindle my fondness of these mountains! Here is a collection of my favorite photos and a few thoughts from along the way.
Late afternoon in Chicago Basin.
The first day was just a grind of trail hiking about 15 miles from the Purgatory trailhead to the popular Chicago Basin. Since nearly every campsite seemed to be occupied already when I arrived in the late afternoon, I was lucky to quickly find a decent place to camp without having to poke around too much. After a bath in the river, a few camp chores, and dinner, I hit the sack early before the sun even set!
I didn’t waste any time going for my first photo objective of the trip – a sunrise atop Windom Peak! I woke up at a painful 2:15am, packed my stuff, ate a granola bar, and hit the trail. After following a mountain goat for a while in the dark, then a tiring scramble up the ridge over numerous false summits, I finally made it up to the summit just in time to get situated and have my camera ready for the sun’s appearance over the horizon. What an epic scene to witness! Totally worth the early wake up call!
A panoramic sunrise view from the summit of Windom Peak (14,094 ft. / 4,295 m) – one of the 14ers in the heart of the Needle Mountains of southwest Colorado.
Looking at the south side of Sunlight Peak (14,065 ft.) from the summit of neighboring Windom Peak. Vestal and Arrow Peaks in the Grenadier Range are visible behind and to the right of Sunlight. In the very far center distance is Mount Sneffels and the Sneffels Range.
After shooting the sunrise, I made coffee, ate breakfast, and just lounged around on the summit for a long time soaking in the views. This is basically the heart of the San Juans and from here I could see just about all of it including the La Platas to the southwest, the San Miguel and Sneffels Ranges to the northwest, Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn far to the north, and the eastern and southern San Juans stretching off endlessly to the southeast.
Finally I got antsy to move along, so I worked my way down from the summit and dropped over a high pass into the next basin over. Once I left Chicago Basin I didn’t see a single person for the next five days until I departed from Needleton at the end of the trek!
The rest of my trip involved crossing over three high passes and bushwhacking through three wild basins, almost all completely off trail, aside from an occasional “boot” or animal trails here and there. I really love this style of backpacking! It’s so satisfying to travel through the mountains using just topo maps and my own routefinding memories and intuitions – not following trails, guidebooks, or GPS tracks. In the generally well-trodden mountains of Colorado, opportunities to experience this type of wild and exploratory backpacking are few and far between, which is why I have always resisted publishing or sharing any detailed route info about the treks I’ve done in these mountains.
A plethora of columbines, the state flower of Colorado.
Jagged Peak rises above an idyllic alpine basin in the Weminuche Wilderness.
Sunset, wildflowers, and Jagged Mountain (13,922 ft.).
The wildflowers have been fantastic this summer in the San Juans, likely due to heavy rains in June and somewhat regular monsoon moisture since then. Not only that, but the mosquitos have been mostly absent, which is a huge bonus! Both these things definitely contributed to a sense of strolling through a paradise on Earth.
Pre-sunrise glow illuminates Windom and Sunlight Peaks.
The Needle Mountains are comprised of ~1.4 billion year old pink granite Precambrian basement rock that never got covered by the thick blanket of lava and ash from the San Juan volcanic field which occurred about 30 million years ago. This ancient, blocky granite gives this range a much different character than the more crumbly volcanic rock of much of the rest of the San Juans, with sharper and more rugged peaks and basins full of large granite slabs and boulders surrounded by grassy tundra and wildflowers.
A small granite peak in the Needle Mountains.
Sunset view overlooking the 14ers in the heart of the Needle Mountains, including Windom and Sunlight Peaks (left) and Mount Eolus (center).
Another nice perk during this trek was that the weather was consistently dry and stable. Without the threat of thunderstorms each afternoon, I was able to spend a couple nights up at high lakes above treeline where I normally wouldn’t consider camping. Nevertheless, I still waited until late afternoon/early evening before setting up my tent, just to be absolutely sure that the clouds wouldn’t suddenly balloon into a thunderstorm.
Anticrepuscular rays of sunrise above Mount Eolus and Animas Mountain, reflected in a high alpine lake.
The reflection photo above is from a remote lake that I first scoped out and shot back in 2007, and I have returned here five more times on various treks in the years since. I love how these rugged peaks reflect in this high lake, but every single time I’ve visited I’ve been cursed with “boring” clear skies. On this seventh visit I still didn’t score any poofy colorful sunrise clouds, but I was still pleased with these intense sunbeams in the sky!
Same view, 14 years apart. You can see how many of the spruce trees have died from beetle kill in the last decade.
I have lamented before on this blog about how the spruce beetles have ravaged the forests in these mountains during the last ten years. I thought it would be interesting to re-shoot an old photo to show an example how things have changed.
(Also, on a less important but lighter note – my backpack nowadays probably weighs half of the monster I hauled back then, due to continued evolution of compact high-quality cameras and lenses and the proliferation of ultralight camping gear options since then).
Curiously some of the old boot trails that existed in these valleys have become quite overgrown and hard to follow compared to how I remember them from six years or more ago. Some obvious campsites have also become overgrown and clearly not used in a long time. This has never been a busy place but there is a sense of abandonment which is unexpected in this age of social media and over-popularization of many wild places. I am not totally sure of the reasons for this, but I suspect that the beetle kill is a factor – the valley access routes are likely choked by beetle kill downfall, perhaps dissuading many groups who had previously trekked around here.
Meadows thick with wildflowers below soaring rock walls in the Needle Mountains.
Once leaving the beetle-killed forests behind, the high alpine meadows were bursting with dense patches of wildflowers!
A mountain goat in the Needle Mountains.
Even the mountain goats here seemed more shy than usual and didn’t show any interest in me (or my salty pee). Or maybe they were just a bit drowsy in the hot weather having just woken from an afternoon siesta!
Sunset light floods the high valley below Turret and Pigeon Peaks.
Sunrise alpenglow light illuminates Turret and Pigeon Peaks.
The Turret Needles reflected in a small alpine lake in the Needle Mountains.
On my fifth day after a relaxing morning next to this high lake I made my way out of the high country all the way down to the Animas River. Confirming my earlier suspicions, the old unmarked boot trail was littered with downfall and the trail was significantly more difficult to follow than I ever remember from previous treks. At one point I got legit lost for a while in complicated terrain and had to backtrack from two different incorrect animal trails before finally finding the correct route again.
The Animas River near Needleton.
It took me too long to descend out of the high peaks to catch a train or to hike all the way back to my car, so I spent one last night camped next to the Animas River not too far from the Needleton train stop. The next morning I caught a ride back to Silverton on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, excited to see Claudia who picked me up to have lunch and shuttle me back to my car at Purgatory.
Every trek through the Needle Mountains is bound to be an adventure, and this one certainly did not disappoint! I’m sure I’ll be back to these special mountains many more times.
