Mt Chiquita (13,069), Ypsilon Mountain (13,514), & Mt Chapin (12,454) by Brian Schultz Friday August 28, 2015
Roundtrip mileage: 8.8 miles from Chapin Pass trailhead (11,020')
Elevation gain: 3,300'
Start to finish: 7 hours 25 minutes
Participants: Tim Briese, Brian Schultz
Our original plan was to run the ridge from Mt Chapin to Fairchild Mountain and possibly Hagues Peak, but that changed in less than 24 hours. The awful weather yesterday took a bite out of our motivation but we did set up a car shuttle in case we changed our minds. Nobody was manning the entrance station to the Rocky Mountain National Park so we just drove through and dropped off my truck at the Lawn Lake trailhead and continued up the Old Fall River Road to the Chapin Pass trailhead parking area.
There is an excellent trail from the road to Chapin Pass and it goes quickly. We turned right at the trail junction at the pass. At 6:30 AM, skies were cloudy but the weather forecast was good and we expected the cloud cover to burn off shortly. It never happened. Not only did the low cloud cover get thicker but gusting winds kicked in and got worse as the morning progressed. And it was downright cold. We took another right turn at the next trail junction and saw elk grazing nearby as we continued on the trail below Mt Chapin. We both agreed that Ypsilon Mountain was probably as far as we'd go today and we'd climb Chapin on the return. The trail faded out on unranked Mt Chiquita and though we found occasional cairns along the way, my GPS was very handy in following a bearing to the summit in the ever thickening fog. We topped out on Chiquita at 8:55.
After a ten minute break on Chiquita, we made our way down to the Chiquita/Ypsilon saddle. From the saddle it was a gain of over 700 feet elevation to Ypsilon and once again we set a bearing, following the grassy and talus terrain in the fog. The clouds began lifting as we neared the summit and we got a neat view of Spectacle Lakes below. We summited at 10:05, one hour after leaving Chiquita, and the clouds broke even more while sitting on top. By the time we left at 10:30, the skies completely opened up but also revealed haze in the air from the smoke of the fires burning in states out west. We smelled smoke off and on afterward.
On our descent of Ypsilon, we contoured around Chiquita without regaining the summit. We started to see many people along the trail and stopped to visit with a number of them. Only a few were going as far as Ypsilon. One couple, from my home state of Minnesota, had an upcoming Everest Base Camp trek and was trying to get acclimatized to higher elevations before their trip. At the Chiquita/Chapin saddle, we headed up at 11:55 on a good trail to Mt Chapin and reached the top at 12:15. It was fast and easy and we sat up there for over 20 minutes.
We were back on the main trail at 12:50 and encountered even more hikers and elk on the way back to Chapin Pass. We reached Tim's truck at 1:55. The Old Fall River Road was crammed with vehicles parked everywhere and tourists were driving up the road one after another. It would be a slow drive to the Visitor Center but we didn't mind. The skies were hazy but the scenery was still nice as we reached the Visitor Center and continued down the main road to my parked truck. Despite the cold morning and poor visibility, we enjoyed these peaks after the clouds lifted.
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