Conundrum Creek 13ers: Hunter to “Triangle”

Summit of Pt. 13,216 looking north at much of the day’s work. Click all photos to enlarge.

Last week I motored over to the Elks with the goal of exploring the Conundrum Creek drainage south of Aspen. My plan was to summit Hunter Peak and then run the ridge south as far as I could. I wound up nabbing six 13ers along the way, finishing with “Triangle Peak” above Triangle Pass, then jogging back down the length of the drainage to the TH with a pit stop at the hot springs along the way. It was a really cool day out there and a fun way to finally see this area, which was long overdue.

Rendering of the ridge line, the drainage, and the peaks, looking north to south.

Conundrum Creek is one of three or four deep north-south valleys that begin near Aspen and extend almost all the way down to Crested Butte. Separating these valleys are three or four long ridge lines that contain the bulk of the high peaks of the Elk Mountains. Several big, adventurous days can be created by running along these ridge lines and stringing multiple peaks together, including the Maroon Bells out to Buckskin Benchmark or beyond, West Maroon Pass out to Pyramid Peak, or if you look further to the east, Hunter Peak out to Triangle Pass.

Like other Elk traverses, the quality of the rock between Hunter and Triangle is generally poor, and I found it tough to stay ridge proper in many areas due to large gendarmes and cliffs that break up the ridge line. I often found myself dropping off the ridge crest, mostly to the east but sometimes west, and traversing across loose piles of crap to bypass these types of things.

Summit of Hunter Peak (13,497 ft) looking west at Pyramid Peak. This is probably the best view of the Landry Line one can get sans airplane.

Keefe summit (13,516 ft) looking north at Hunter and the traverse between the two.

And even further south on top of Pt. 13,537, with Hunter way in the back, Keefe, and Hilliard Peak being the yellow triangular hump in the foreground.

Probably the most challenging part of the day was the terrain between Pt. 13,537 and the next peak to the south, 13,216. The rock through here was particularly terrible and required a lot of weaving up and over and down across both sides of the ridge line to finally get past all the bullshit and down to reasonably solid terrain. Good times.

Pt. 13,216 and it’s big summit cairn, with the last peak of the day, “Triangle Peak”, behind it.

On top of “Triangle Peak” (13,380 ft) looking northeast towards Castle, “Castleabra”, and Cathedral.

After dropping off the south side of Pt. 13,216 and with my feet thoroughly thrashed, I was happy to finally find a solid trail again up to Triangle Pass, then onto “Triangle Peak”. My timing was perfect as a big thunderhead was bearing down on the area from the south, any later and I may have had to leave “Triangle Peak” for another day.

Then it was down to the small matter of the 10 mile slog back out Conundrum Creek to the TH. At least there was a good trail the entire way, as well as some hot spring I’d heard a little bit about sitting between me and the car.

Start of the long road home.

A good way to calm the muscles and sooth the joints on the way out. I wish every long slog in the mountains had a place like this to take a pit stop.

Stats on the day wound up being 23 miles and a hair under 8,000 ft. Dinner in Glenwood rounded out the day nicely, followed by the happy realization that I only had about a 50 minute drive back home instead of the usual 2.75 hours. My biggest piece of advice from the day: don’t ever try to find a good place for a post-climb meal/beer in Aspen on the eve of 4th of July. My mistake…

Thanks for reading 🙂