"Huerfanito" (13,081) by Brian Schultz Saturday June 21, 2014

Mileage: 8.4 miles from Upper Huerfano trailhead

Elevation gain: ~2,500'

Start to finish: 7 hours 20 minutes

I reached the Upper Huerfano trailhead just before dark last night. The pull-outs along the road were filled with vehicles, no surprise being a weekend, but what really surprised me was seeing several two wheel drive vehicles at the end of the rough road. I didn't ask how long it took the driver of a compact Chevrolet with five occupants to get up the road but I complimented him on his driving skills.

Of the few I talked to last night, nobody was climbing "Huerfanito" today. When I started at 6:10 AM, I noticed five others who'd begun before me but I never caught up to them nor did anyone overtake me along the trail.

Despite the fast flowing Huerfano River, I found an easy crossing upstream without taking off my boots. When I got close to the talus field that paralleled the woods higher up, I departed the trail and headed up the talus, just like the last time I was here when I climbed Huerfano Peak. It would explain why nobody overtook me. I don't know why I did the same thing again this time, obviously I wasn't paying attention, but then again, the trail was full of lots of snow. After a while I could see the trail below me but I stayed high and followed the ups and downs of the talus to the high basin.

When I reached the basin, I got a good look at Huerfanito. I watched several climbers heading for Lindsey and I stayed on the Lindsey trail as well until I got high enough to traverse to the Lindsey/Huerfanito saddle. I chose to climb the east ridge of Huerfanito because the slopes on the west ridge appeared to be holding lots of snow and the east side looked clear. Which was true until I reached the saddle and began contouring beneath the towers of Huerfanito's ridge on the back side. Interestingly, there were a couple of no trespassing signs at the Lindsey/Huerfanito saddle and I wondered if they were posted to keep climbers from descending to the Trinchera Ranch property below.

Anyway, I traversed over steep gullies, some snow filled, and it was slow travel on the loose scree until reaching a point where I could finally head up. There were a few class 3 moves to reach the western tower and I arrived on its summit at 9:50. I backtracked to the east tower and found the scrambling to be much easier on top of the ridge than below, and arrived a few minutes later. I departed the east tower at 10:20, returned to the west tower, and from there studied the west ridge slopes and decided a safe descent of snow fields below would work. It went well and I saw two bighorn sheep along the way.

Once I intersected the trail in the basin, I stayed on it the entire way back. There were lots of snow patches covering it but not enough to lose the trail since I was paying closer attention, and I arrived at my truck at 1:30. This turned out to be a very nice day, warm and mostly sunny, and the peak was fun climbing.

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