Treasury Mountain (13,462) by Brian Schultz Monday July 21, 2014

Roundtrip mileage: 5.75 miles from Yule Pass trailhead

Elevation gain: 2,225'

Start to finish: 6 hours 10 minutes

Participants: Tim Briese and Brian Schultz

We left Mt Crested Butte at 7:00 AM and drove up to Schofield Pass. From the pass we turned left on the Paradise Divide road (CR 734), a mostly good road except for a deep, muddy section. We were able to bypass it in Tim's four wheel drive on a parallel track but two wheel drive vehicles could have difficulty in this area, even in bone dry conditions. We arrived at Paradise Divide at 7:50 and stopped at a very scenic lake before continuing on the road a short distance to the Yule Pass trailhead.

We began at 8:00 under sunny clear skies and the forecast called for the same all day, a nice break from the monsoon weather pattern of late. The trail is very good, but there is a large washout on it where we were particularly glad to have trekking poles with, and it also narrows at several points where a slip on the exposed slopes would be difficult to stop. After 0.9 miles we departed the trail and made an easy bushwhack up to the Treasury/Cinnamon saddle where another good trail continues up the ridge. We stopped for a few minutes at a small weather station on the ridge.

From there, we proceeded up the ridge and enjoyed nice views looking back down to the Yule Pass trail. As we crossed a plateau (photo 1, photo 2) below the summit ridge, we noticed a group of six gaining on us but they stopped at the edge of the plateau. They appeared to be setting up another weather station and were not making a summit attempt.

The summit ridge had some rough spots but nothing harder than class 2. The last stretch to the top was narrow and exposed but lots of fun, and the weather was so nice when we arrived on the summit at 10:50 that we stayed for an hour and twenty minutes (photo 1, photo 2). Tim and I were interested in climbing Treasury's neighbor, Treasure Mountain, but not by the technical connecting ridge from Treasury. We'll save Treasure Mountain for another day and perhaps approach it from the west.

On the descent we stopped for a break in a scenic area and contemplated climbing Cinnamon Mountain but when we reached the saddle we decided against it. The steep ridge gains 700 feet in 0.4 miles, certainly doable, but we were content with climbing just Treasury today.

The same group of people we saw earlier was now doing something else on Cinnamon's slopes but we couldn't tell what. Once we got back on the Yule trail, we started seeing lots of hikers, some whom had turned around at the washout because they couldn't get across without poles.

We pulled in to the parking area at 2:10 and drove the Slate River road back to Crested Butte. The road is a narrow shelf at the top but widens lower down. The views looking back toward Treasury Mountain are nice and there is a scenic valley at the bottom of the road. Crested Butte's namesake peak begged for a photo as we drove back up to our hotel in Mt Crested Butte.

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