Gladstone Ridge (13,209) & Jones Mountain B (13,218)  by Brian Schultz   Tuesday  August 21, 2012

Roundtrip mileage: ~13 miles from Ptarmigan Lake trailhead

Elevation gain: ~4,000'

Start to finish: 7 hours 40 minutes

While driving up toward Cottonwood Pass, I noticed signs saying the road would be closed later in the day. I didn't know what time I'd finish on these peaks and hoped there wouldn't be a problem getting out. I needn't have worried because when I did drive out later, the police were setting up barricades for traffic going up, not down. The road would be closed for a bike race, which I got to see in action the next day at the junction of US 24 and the Winfield road.

I started from the Ptarmigan Lake trailhead at 7:00 AM. The excellent trail goes to Ptarmigan Lake and continues up to the saddle between Gladstone Ridge and Jones Mountain. Straightforward enough, but I somehow ended up following a trail after reaching a scenic lake and it soon faded out in an open area. All was not lost though, as three deer stopped and posed for a picture, making the inadvertent detour worthwhile. I regained the trail after a short bushwhack and by 8:45 I was rounding Ptarmigan Lake (photo 1, photo 2). Less than ten minutes later I was on the Gladstone/Jones saddle.

From the saddle, it's 2.5 miles to Gladstone's summit on mostly easy terrain. I avoided Pt 13,038 by traversing on its right side and reached the summit at 10:20. I stayed 15 minutes.

I made it back to the saddle at 11:45 and stopped to watch the tourists down at the lake. Jones Mountain isn't far up from the other side of the saddle but the elevation gain is almost a thousand feet. I began at 11:55 and surprised myself by not needing to stop until reaching the summit at 12:30. The weather was nice and I stayed up there for twenty minutes.

When I got back to the saddle, two tourists sitting there told me they watched me climb the peak and after a brief visit with them, I headed down to the lake. I  hiked out nonstop from the lake to the trailhead.

I reached the trailhead at 2:40, moments behind another couple. They'd also seen me climbing Jones and we had an interesting conversation, especially when it came to light that the fellow, Dave, from Austin, Texas, and I, both climbed Aconcagua in January of this year. It led to a long conversation before we parted company. I ended up running into Dave and his wife Lisa again later in Buena Vista, which led to another interesting conversation. Our second encounter revealed that Dave was an attorney and he offered to help when I mentioned a trespass citation I received four days earlier in southern Colorado.

The Aconcagua connection didn't end when Dave and I parted company. I met Pete Krzanowsky for dinner that evening before we drove to Winfield to set up camp. Pete and I were together on the Aconcagua climb in January.

-Back-