Roundtrip mileage: 19 miles

Elevation gain: 5,600'

Start to finish: 12 hours 45 minutes from Beaver Lake trail

Participants: Tim Briese & Brian Schultz

Any climb that avoids a backpack interests us but this route really drew our attention with what appeared to be its relative ease and a good trail. Many thanks to Steve Knapp for writing a detailed report, I suspect over time this will become the standard route for anyone wanting to dayhike Jackson.

Tim and I met in Avon last night and drove three miles to scope out the trailhead in Beaver Creek Village. An attendant at the village entrance station gave us a map and we found it to be useful because you have to park in one of the village's public garages (free in the summer) and we didn't want to waste time in the dark of the morning looking for one. We drove up and down the ski area's main road and decided Ford Hall garage was the closest one to the trailhead. It would still require a half mile walk up to the trailhead in the morning.

After a much too short night of sleep in Avon, we made the quick drive to Beaver Creek and pulled into the Ford garage at 3:20 AM. We walked up the road, ignoring a trail called the "Five Senses Trail" that parallels the road, and arrived at the trailhead at 3:35. The weather forecast today wasn't great but our plan was to knock off a lot of mileage by headlamp and hopefully make the summit before any bad weather rolled in.

The trail exceeded our expectations. It was excellent with gradual elevation gain to Beaver Lake, Lower Turquoise Lake, and Upper Turquoise Lake. The right side of Lower Turquoise Lake presented fine camping spots if one were inclined to do a backpack and when the trail faded out past Uppper Turquoise Lake we stopped for a food break. The time was 6:55. Upon resuming we easily found the described crux of the day at 7:30, a steep gully accessing Jackson's slopes above. This gully had a handy climber's trail switchbacking up it, and once above it, I set a waypoint to be sure we'd find it if weather fogged in later. It only took 20 minutes to ascend the gully and we had a nice view of Upper Turquoise Lake through the trees.

Skies were clear and sunny as we made our way up grass and talus to Jackson's northeast ridge. The easy terrain continued to a notch where large slabs could've been downclimbed but we simply descended around them. We arrived on the summit at 10:05 under still sunny skies, but clouds were building. Another ranked thirteener was only .75 miles away but neither of us felt compelled to make the trek over, mostly because of the uncertain weather but also because we were satisfied with getting our main objective. We departed Jackson at 10:40.

We reached the Grouse Mountain trail junction at 12:30 and took a twenty five minute extended break. Tim was completely out of water and much of the time was spent filtering enough to get back to town. After the break we hiked out nonstop. Thunder started rumbling at 2:40 and a thunderstorm hit at 3:00 but we weren't concerned as we were safely in the trees by then. We saw many hikers, bikers, and backpackers along the trail and arrived at the trailhead at 3:55. Ten minutes later we trudged into the parking garage, sore feet and all, but feeling pretty good about getting the peak done as a dayhike.

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