"Tundra Top" (13,450), "Cataract Peak" (13,524), & Coney Benchmark (13,334) by Brian Schultz Saturday August 20, 2016

Tundra Top & Cataract Peak:

Roundtrip mileage: 9 miles from Colorado Trail (via Wager Gulch road above Carson townsite)
Elevation gain: 2,700'
Start to finish: 6 hours 50 minutes
Participants: Tim Briese, Brian Schultz

We drove the Lake San Cristobal road from Lake City to the Wager Gulch road. I was leery about driving my Highlander up the 4x4 Wager Gulch road but the road was in great shape and we easily made it to the Carson townsite (elev 11,550') for our overnight. That's as far as I wanted to drive and since Tim drove also, we would use his truck in the morning.

It turned out that the remainder of the road to the pass near Bent Peak was also in great shape and so was the road down to the Colorado Trail intersection, where we parked for our approach. We began on the Colorado Trail at 6:00 AM.

Sunrise lit up the peaks as we followed the excellent trail to a pass below Tundra Top. We stopped at 7:45 for a fifteen minute break at the pass and then hiked up easy grassy terrain to the summit, which we reached at 8:30. We walked around the huge flat summit and covered the highpoints before departing five minutes later to Cataract Peak. The descent looked a bit sketchy at first but we found a good route through rocks and after 100 feet it turned into an easy descent.

We reached the saddle at 9:00 and studied the slopes leading up to Cataract. The best route up the scree appeared to be on a trail that angled left from the other defined trails and then right to gain the ridge.

This worked great and we topped out on the summit at 9:30. It was fun to point out all the peaks (photo 1, photo 2) in the area, many of which we've climbed, while enjoying the warm, sunny weather for a half hour. We started down at 10:00 and headed back to Tundra Top. We continued down to the Colorado Trail and stopped for a short break at 10:55 before following the trail back to our parking spot. As we got closer to the road, we started seeing thru hikers as well as a mountain biker, and reached the truck at 12:50.

Coney Benchmark:

Roundtrip mileage: 1 mile
Elevation gain: 200'
Start to finish: 35 minutes
Participants: Tim Briese, Brian Schultz

I talked Tim into driving a road at the pass that heads toward Coney Benchmark. The first part of this road doubles as the Colorado Trail and we saw a number of thru hikers on it. We parked high on the road at 13,100' and aimed for the peak at 1:30 PM. We thought Coney BM was to our right and had to shift our bearing to the left when we realized that's where it was. We met a thru hiker as we crossed the Colorado Trail and visited for a minute before continuing up the grassy slopes.

We claimed our third summit (photo 1, photo 2) at 1:45 and returned to the truck at 2:05. Had I known there was another thirteener past Coney BM, I would've considered climbing it too but I can't complain. We had a nice day with great weather.