Wildhorse Peak (13,266) & Blackwall Mountain (13,073) by Brian Schultz Friday August 19, 2016

Roundtrip mileage: 9 miles from Horsethief trailhead
Elevation gain: 2,575'
Start to finish: 7 hours 5 minutes

Many thanks to Darin Baker's trip report on these peaks even though it took three years to put them on my itinerary.

My friends Art and Mark offered to let me stay in their room in Lake City again last night, which I really appreciated because I could dry out my wet clothes from yesterday and spend some time with them before parting company.

I drove the Engineer Pass road from Lake City to a pullout on the road at 12,435' elev. This is an easy road that passenger cars can drive, at least to the 4x4 sign down the road from the pullout. If passenger cars do stop at the 4x4 sign, it's just a short distance to hike up the road to the pullout. I began at 7.25 AM on the trail and it didn't take long to see Wildhorse Peak poking up in the distance.

I left the trail to cross American Flats (photo 1, photo 2), an area of wide open tundra with lots of ups and downs, and set my bearing toward the SE ridge of Wildhorse. I stayed on the right side of the drainage as I neared the peak and found some hit and miss trails, although no trails are necessary as the route finding is straightforward. Once on the slopes of Wildhorse, I kept mostly to the right side of the ridge.

After a steep grunt to the top, there's a false summit before reaching the actual summit and there's some exposure between them. Nothing difficult or scary though. I stepped on the summit at 9:10, where the views (photo 1, photo 2) stretch far and wide. I departed at 9:30, reversed my route down, and contoured around Wildhorse toward Blackwall Mountain.

I stayed on the connecting ridge for a short while and visited with a sheepherder named Jaime before dropping into the basin to avoid the towers along the ridge. He didn't speak much English but I knew enough Spanish to carry on a fractured conversation before continuing on.

The traverse to Blackwall was on talus and grass, and the very imposing "Dragons Back" in the basin looked like a fun peak to climb. I was glad to get around the difficulties of the connecting ridge before heading up again. After a few discouraging false summits, I neared the top and reached it at 11:35 (photo 1, photo 2), and sat down for twenty minutes enjoying the views (photo 1, photo 2).

On the return, I dropped further into the grassy basin to avoid the talus and this worked out well. There were some trails but again, none were needed to get back to Wildhorse's SE ridge. I saw a couple hikers in the upper reaches of American Flats and after plodding along, I reached my truck at 2:30.