Henry Mountain (13,254), Squaretop Mountain (12,985), & Fossil Mountain (12,749) by Brian Schultz Tuesday July 20, 2021:

Round-trip mileage:~9 miles from Lamphier Lake trailhead
Elevation gain: ~3,800'
Start to finish: 9 hours
Participants: Tim Briese, Brian Schultz

Tim and I enjoyed this area so much last year when we climbed Broncho Mountain that we decided to come back and climb Henry Mountain and its neighbors. From Gunnison, we drove Hwy 50 east and turned left on CR 76 in Parlin, then left again on FR 771 in Ohio to the Gold Creek campground. We drove slightly further to the Lamphier Lake trailhead.

The chance of storms/showers was high today but we had beautiful weather when we began at 6:05 AM. Our pace was moderate and when we reached the lake at 7:45, we stopped for a short energy break. After the break, we began a bushwhack toward unranked Squaretop Mountain and its difficult ridge on the west side of Gunsight Pass. We aimed for a grassy gully that would get us on the ridge just east of the summit, avoiding the prominent grassy gully that at first glance looked like the one to take. That gully would've put us on the ridge but with difficult terrain to Squaretop.

The grassy gully we took was steep and when the grass faded out we contoured on handy ledges to get to the top. We were relieved to gain the ridge at 9:20 and see that Squaretop's summit was within easy reach ahead of us. At 9:42 we arrived on the summit (photo 1, photo 2) and after a few minutes we departed for Henry Mountain. This was straightforward and at 10:35 we reached Henry's summit. So far so good. Fifteen minutes later we headed back to Squaretop but this time we contoured around it instead of reclimbing it.

We thought the rest of our route to unranked Fossil Mountain and unranked Sheep Mountain would be a piece of cake. It started out easy enough but soon the ridge to Fossil presented routefinding challenges. Careful route finding around tall towers and big boulders, bypassed mostly on the right sides, eventually put us on Fossil's summit (photo 1, photo 2, photo 3) at 12:25. We stayed 15 minutes on top but clouds were building and the decision to skip Sheep Mountain was an easy one. The long winding route back to the trailhead from Sheep Mountain would've taken extra time and we preferred to get lower down as quickly as possible before any storms rolled in.

But it meant descending Fossil's steep slopes toward Mill Lake and it took an hour to get there because of all the cliffs that had to be negotiated. At 1:35 we took a short break at the lake and now had a good trail (Mill Lake trail) to the trailhead across from Gold creek campground.

Several hikers were going up to Mill Lake as we descended and just as we arrived at the trailhead, it began to sprinkle lightly. We were only a few minutes from our truck at the Lamphier Lake trailhead and made a beeline for it. As soon as we jumped in the truck, at 3:05, it began pouring rain. Nice timing for us!

Other than the arduous ridge to Fossil Mountain, this was an enjoyable day with a nice loop route.