Starting off the traverse between Babcock and Spiller Peaks, La Plata Mountains, Colorado.
The La Plata Mountains are a small subrange of the San Juans that reside in the far southwest corner of Colorado northeast of Mancos. A handful of craggy peaks make up the bulk of this small range, a majority of which can be explored in just a few days time. The mountains are named after the silver deposits discovered there by the Spanish exploration of the region in the mid-1700’s.
As one of the farthest away sets of thirteeners from my house, I’d always wanted to get down there to check them out but it’d been a long time coming. Finally this year was the year, and I found myself making the long drive down there from the Vail Valley over the 4th of July weekend. The plan was to hit Hesperus, Lavender and Moss peaks from the Sharkstooth TH as a solo outing then motor around to La Plata Canyon and meet Steve for the Babcock to Spiller Traverse the next day, one of the last remaining routes I’d yet to do out of Cooper’s 50 Classic Scrambles book.
Sunrise on Hesperus Mountain from the west. The igneous intrusions pushing through the older sedimentary rock give Hesperus a unique and striking appearance.
Starting things off.
The hike up Hesperus from the west entailed a mellow start along a well-defined trail for a few miles. Eventually it came time to break off the trail and hike more or less straight up to peak’s west ridge. The weather was perfectly clear as it would stay all weekend, though a few wildfires burning to the northwest made the smoke situation a bit of a gamble.
Happy 4th of July.
Once the west ridge was attained, it was a short schlep to the top of Hesperus Mountain at 13,238 feet. Per Roof of the Rockies Hesperus was named by the Hayden Survey “for it’s far western position”. It comes from the ancient Greek word hésperos which means “evening star” and represents the planet Venus when it shines in the western sky after sunset.
Lavender Peak seen from the Hesperus/Lavender saddle.
After a short summit stay and a quick breakfast, I continued on down the ridge to the east towards Lavender Peak. The relatively well-trodden climber’s trail up Hesperus was traded for looser rock and a higher degree of routefinding to find the best way through. Eventually a few vertical notches forced me off the ridge proper, with the clear strategy being to drop to the south, then descend into a gully and cross to the other side followed by a brief scramble back up to the ridge crest.
Lavender’s final summit push. If you look closely you can make out a small cairn top left.
A final scramble up blocky terrain had to me to the top of Lavender Peak’s small summit. From there Hesperus looked just as cool as from the other side. Such unique geology in this area.
Summit lounging on Lavender looking back at Hesperus.
After a brief summit stay I continued over to Mt. Moss, named after a miner who discovered gold in La Plata Canyon in 1856. Though unranked, it seemed like a worthy side jaunt to extend the day out just a little further. From Moss’s summit I chose to descend a loose gully and traverse west, bypassing a large portion of the ridge between Hesperus and Lavender, then ascend to the low-point between the two and cross over to the north. From there it was a long scree descent down into West Mancos Creek where I was ultimately able to contour around the northeast side of Hesperus back to the West Mancos trail and the car.
Looking back up at the west La Platas from the Jackson Gulch Reservoir a few hour later.
After a beer and a foot soak in the reservoir, I motored around to La Plata Canyon to find a campsite for the following day’s objective. Eventually Steve showed up and we cooked up some dinner, did some catching up, and traded it in for an early wakeup call.
The Babcock/Spiller Traverse seen from our campsite. The three summits of Babcock are the obvious trio of high points on the right.
The next morning we set off up the Boren Creek road with another perfect weather day in the forecast. It was great to have Steve along for what was a somewhat anticipated traverse between West Babcock and Spiller peaks. Known as “The Knife”, the narrow ridge between them is half a mile long and being featured as one of Cooper’s 50 “classic” scrambles, is one of the more famous ridges in the entirety of the San Juans. Though Steve had previously summited Babcock, he had not done the traverse to Spiller. Needless to say we were excited to check it out.
Babcock Peak is a large massif comprised of three distinct summits. Though the middle summit is the true high point, Steve felt it would be fun to check off all three summits before heading across The Knife over to Spiller. With zero chance of rain and not having to be home anytime in particular, I obliged and we found ourselves scrambling up class 4 ledges to the summit of East Babcock.
The climb up East Babcock was pretty airy to say the least.
From East Babcock we descended down the south face of the peak, getting drawn into more elevation loss than we expected before finally being able to drop back down to the firm ground south of the Babcock massif and climb back up to the summit of Middle Babcock.
Middle Babcock seen from the southern flank of East Babcock.
The middle and true summit of Babcock Peak.
From the middle summit we dropped down once again and found an exposed ledge system that plopped us into another gully, from which we were able to re-ascend up class 3 and 4 blocks to the summit of West Babcock. The ledges we used to descend off the middle summit I believe belong to the same summit route described in Cooper’s book. From the summit of West Babcock we took a long break to refuel, then began the traverse.
Steve climbing up a fun section early on.
Further along as the ridge narrowed. Photo by Steve.
Hesperus (left), Lavender (middle), and Moss (right) seen from ridge.
Scrambling around some loose towers. Photo by Steve.
Closing in on Spiller’s summit with most of The Knife ridge and Babcock Peak in back.
On the summit of Spiller Peak at 13,134 feet. Traverse complete!
The traverse took us about an hour and went down much easier than anticipated. Historical reports online seem to vary in their descriptions regarding the ridge’s true difficulty and in the end we both felt it was easier than some have claimed. Care is still required of course and there are a few sections where you wouldn’t want to make a mistake, but Steve and I both felt The Knife was more fun than scary.
After descending loose gullies down Spiller’s southeast flank, we hit the road and had nothing but a 90 minute plod down to the cars. Burgers on the grill and beers rounded out the afternoon nicely, then it was off to Three Barrel Brewing in Del Norte for a more proper meal, then home.
Cheers to a fine weekend in an incredible corner of the state.
They may be far away but the La Platas sure are awesome. Steve, thanks for making the long trek down and rounding out a weekend I won’t soon forget 🙂
Nice shots, Ben! It was great to get down there a second time and collecting all three of the summits -plus the table knife – was a fun adventure.