Jagged Peak - San Juan Mountains CO

Jagged Peak via the Beartown Trailhead

We took at trip to the San Juan Mountains in southwest Colorado over Labor Day weekend in 2007. The group met at the 30 mile campground (National Forest Campground) near the Rio Grande Reservoir - to the west of Creede. 4 wheel drive vehicles continued on while less hardy vehicles (ie the Impala) stayed in a hiker parking lot just inside the campground. The drive from the campground to the Beartown Trailhead took an hour or so. The GPS was valuable in finding the trailhead. From the trailhead, we headed up over Hunchback Pass and down to the Vallacito Creek. We camped at the confluence of Villacito Creek and Sunlight Creek. Beautiful spot - here's the Seirra Design Tent Magazine shot of our camp:

The next morning, we headed up Sunlight Creek. It was necessary to ford Villacito Creek - beta is to make sure you cross above the confluence (to the right) as you will stay on that side of Sunlight Creek for the duration. It will be necessary to navigate across two significant avalanche fields - lots of downed trees. At the top of the valley, stay left - climb the boulder field to an amazing view:

From the top of the boulder field, climb to the right of the significant rock formation. Then head left towards the base of the Jagged technical route.

At this juncture of our climb, the clouds had built in significantly. As we contemplated go or no-go, it started to rain. No-go. In the interest of something different, we returned to camp via the Leviathan valley and creek. We climbed up to Leviathan pass - here is the view looking back towards Jagged:



The loop trip was great fun. Group consensus is that Sunlight is probably the best route for ascent and that either is good for descent. Here are a few pictures from the descent:

Here's a photo of the group at dinner (left to right - Bill, Jacq, Britton, Brenda, Bart, Ralf, Greg)

On the way out, the majority of the group headed back to Beartown. Bill and I went to the Villacitio Reservior where Greg drove around to pick us up. The drive around is long, but the one-way trip is great fun because you get to see so much more of the area.

In 2007, a bridge was washed out an it was necessary to wade across Villacito Creek at a significant avalanche log jamb. Looked like the goverment was at work on replacing the bridge.