Mt Argentine (11,412), Mineral Hill (10,890), & Humbug Hill (11,100) by Brian Schultz Saturday June 13, 2015

Mt Argentine:

Roundtrip mileage: 3.6 miles from Pennsylvania Creek Rd #611

Elevation gain: 1,100'

Start to finish: 2 hours 30 minutes

Participants: Brian Schultz & grandson Tyler

Today I wanted to take Tyler up Peak 9 in the Tenmile range but the peaks were still blanketed with late spring snow. We weren't prepared for snow climbing so we drove south of Breckenridge and turned left to the Blue River townsite to climb Mt Argentine. My GPS came in handy to get to the trailhead on Pennsylvania Creek road because of the many residential roads in the area.

We started at 8:30 AM under sunny, clear skies on a trail just to the right of the trailhead sign. In short order the trail intersected the road and we stayed on the road because I didn't see a trail continuing anywhere. Apparently, I didn't look hard enough- it's on the other side of the road as a two track rut. Following the road worked out fine but when the road started leading away from the summit, we turned to our left and began a bushwhack up to the summit just past a stream crossing.

It was a steep grunt straight up to the summit. Finding a route through the trees was easy though because there wasn't much deadfall and the trees weren't dense. We arrived on top at 9:40 and enjoyed some nice views of the peaks to our west, especially of fourteener Quandary Peak. We saw the trail that we missed earlier and decided to follow it down but turned around shortly because it was buried in deep snow. We went back to the summit area and bushwhacked down the way we came up. We made it back to the truck at 11:00 and had plenty of time for another peak so we drove back to Breckenridge.

Mineral Hill & Humbug Hill:

Roundtrip mileage: 4.2 miles from road GH 66 (4x4)

Elevation gain: 900'

Start to finish: 2 hours 40 minutes

Participants: Brian Schultz & grandson Tyler

We drove back to Breckenridge and turned east onto Wellington road, which turns into French Gulch road. I was hoping to take a 4x4 road shown on the map just past Mineral Hill and drive up close to the peak, but I couldn't find it and the road I did see looked to be private. We continued on road 357 and took a 4x4 road, marked 566 on the Trails Illustrated map, to a multi junction intersection at 11,100'. In dry conditions we could've driven road GH66 west to Mineral Hill but it was packed full of snow so we parked.

We were in an interesting predicament because our elevation was higher than Mineral Hill and I knew what that meant. We'd have to drop at least 400 feet in elevation since Mineral Hill is ranked and we'd have to regain at least that much to the summit. It would be a longer approach as well but Tyler was up for it.

We had two choices: either follow road GH66 or bushwhack through the trees. We took the bushwhack because there was little snow in the woods and we could follow a bearing on my GPS to keep a mostly straight line. We started at 11:55. The trees were easy to hike through and the only issue was a steep descent and ascent of a drainage just before Mineral's summit. Above the drainage, we crossed road GH 66 and heard a motorbike but didn't see it. Just below the summit we hit a talus field, which Tyler enjoyed, and arrived on the summit shortly after at 12:55. The views from the summit were excellent and we stayed for 15 minutes.

Tyler wasn't too keen on taking on the drainage again so we decided to walk GH 66 back to the truck knowing it would be full of snow in areas and would add extra mileage. It turned out to be a good choice though. The road was wet and muddy but the snow was manageable. The biker we heard earlier came up the road behind us and had some trouble in the deeper snow on the road. Two more dirt bikes came down the road after the first one went up.

When we neared unranked Humbug Hill, I made a dash for it while Tyler stayed on the road. It only took a few minutes get there and back and when I returned we were only a short distance from where we parked. We arrived at 2:35 and had the company of another truck whose occupants were enjoying the views of the surrounding peaks to the south, which looked to be Mt Guyot and Bald Mountain according to my map. We drove by Mineral Hill on the way out and headed over to Leadville to see if we could add Ball Mountain to the day's agenda. Unfortunately, the roads near Ball Mountain were so full of snow that we were forced to turn around.

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