Belleview Mountain (13,233) by Brian Schultz Tuesday July 22, 2014

Roundtrip mileage: 9.75 miles from East Fork trailhead

Elevation gain: 3,200'

Start to finish: 8 hours 25 minutes

Participants: Tim Briese and Brian Schultz

Another beautiful day was in the forecast as we drove from Mt Crested Butte to Schofield Pass and down the other side a mile to the East Fork trailhead (elev. 10,410'). Passenger cars can easily handle this road if it's dry. There were lots of vehicles parked in the large parking area and several hikers were getting ready ahead of us.

We began at 7:15 AM under sunny and clear skies on the well traveled trail. It didn't take long before we stopped to take pictures of the wildflowers (photo 1, photo 2, photo 3), the first of many stops to photograph the most stunning display of flowers I think I've ever seen in all my years of hiking in Colorado.

It's four miles from the trailhead to West Maroon Pass and the trail (photo 1, photo 2) is excellent all the way. Our photo stops slowed us down but we still passed by some of the hikers who'd started ahead of us and we arrived at the pass at 10:00. Lots of hikers had come up from the other side in addition to those from our side, attesting to the popularity of this trail.

We stayed at the pass for 30 minutes, talking to other hikers and having a bite to eat, and put on our helmets before heading up the class 3 ridge. Of all the people at West Maroon Pass, nobody besides us was climbing Belleview. And as it turned out, we'd have Belleview to ourselves- nobody was ahead of us nor did anybody start behind us later.

It's 3/4 of a mile to the summit from the pass and the first half of the ridge involves routefinding with some exposure. The rock is typical loose Elk rock and we stayed left of the towers as we weaved our way up. The ridge's difficulty eases after the towers and we reached a high point (13,210') on the ridge, where Belleview's summit is just a short distance away but looks horribly intimidating.

We knew there was a manageable route though, and as we traversed around the right (east) side, we found an easy class 3 chute to the top. We arrived on the summit at 11:55 and relaxed for 30 minutes (photo 1, photo 2). The views of Maroon Peak were outstanding as were Pyramid Peak and its neighboring peaks.

Not surprisingly, there were even more people at the pass on our return at 1:40. We stopped for a twenty minute break before hiking mostly nonstop back to the trailhead. We arrived at my truck at 3:40.

This was a super fun day of climbing and the scenery was outstanding but our good fortune wasn't over yet. On our way to Buena Vista via Cottonwood Pass, we saw a mother moose and two young ones drinking in a pond. It was a nice finish to a great day in the mountains.

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