Shuttle Hike from Matterhorn Creek Trailhead to Nellie Creek Trailhead
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Nellie Creek Falls (above)
Matterhorn Creek Valley (above) |
This was a weekend I was excited about. I was planning
on hiking four fourteeners: Wetterhorn, Uncompahgre, Redcloud, and
Sunshine. I would be doing Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre with Kirk,
Ken, and Jim. On Sunday, Ken was planning on doing Sunshine
and Redcloud with me while Kirk and Jim would attempt Handies. I drove down alone around 2:30pm on the afternoon of Friday the 13th. I arrived at the turnoff to Nellie Creek with enough light remaining. I began driving up and took this shot (left) of a nice waterfall. I continued up and the road forked. Uh, which way do I go? I didn't have my guidebook with me so I followed my nose. I picked the lefthand fork because it looked a little more travelled than the other. It began switching back quite a bit and got really muddy in places. I started to get sorta worried that I was on the wrong road. I didn't think to reset my odometer so I wasn't sure how long I'd been going. For all I knew, this road continued on forever. Still, my logic told me that this must be the main road because it would undoubtedly be documented as a trailhead since it was between Matterhorn Creek and the other fork. OR it would simply end soon. Well, I was right - this was the correct road. I arrived at Nellie Creek trailhead with just enough light remaining to filter some water. I got the back all ready for me to sleep in and read for a while. Then I got out and decided if I could see any meteors. The night was perfectly clear and the Perseid meteor shower was "scheduled" to begin any minute. I looked up and couldn't believe the amount of stars in the sky. I could also see the hazy strips of the Milky way running across the top of the sky. After about 15 minutes, I began seeing meteors. Some of them were quite long. What a great experience. After about thirty minutes I decided that I had better go to bed. The rest of the guys were supposed to show up much later. Kirk had told me that they would try to find me that night though the wouldn't wake me up. As soon as I turned out the light, I saw a vehicles headlights. The SUV pulled up near me then turned around and headed back down. It was them. They were heading back down for a flat spot to set up their tent. The following morning at 6am, they drove back up and picked me up and we all headed for the Matterhorn Creek trailhead. We left my car at the Nellie Creek trailhead. We were going to hike Wetterhorn first, then over to Uncompahgre, then back out to Nellie Creek where my jeep would be waiting. |
| It took us about an hour
to drive down the Nellie Creek road, down to the Matterhorn jeep road, and up to the
trailhead. After taking self portraits of all of us,
we began hiking. It was 7:08 am. It was pretty cold this morning - in the low 40's. This was probably a combination of the fact that it had been crystal clear the night before and was cloudy this morning. We made good time though and it wasn't long at all until we had our first view of Wetterhorn Peak (right) peeking over the rise in front of us. There was one large switchback (in the upper right of this picture) and then we contoured along, angling up slightly, until we broke out of treeline and had a grand view of Wetterhorn. The trail we were on continued towards Uncompahgre and we were searching for a branch that headed towards Wetterhorn but we couldn't find one. So, we simply broke out across the meadow. We found a trail on the way there, but on the way back we noticed that it does simply end after a while and you have to cross the meadow without a trail regardless. |
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(l-r) Matterhorn and Uncompahgre
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I was surprised at how
close Wetterhorn looked. We'd only been hiking for a couple of hours at most and it
seemed we were nearly there. Of course, the past four fourteener hikes I'd been on
had been 16 miles minimum round trip. It was great to be so close so quickly.
As we hiked up, we had great views of Matterhorn Peak and Uncompahgre (left). The
trail winds around underneath Wetterhorn and eventually gains a little shelf. From here,
it's only a short hike to the saddle. From here, you have a commanding view of Wetterhorn. As you hike up, the terrain becomes increasingly difficult but none of it is what I would consider "difficult" at all. It's mostly second and third class scrambling. The route is fairly easy to follow as well. I was well in front of everyone and scouting out the route, choosing the best one, and relaying it to the others. I pretty much followed the cairns however occasionally, they would disappear. However, it was easy to stay on route; I simply picked the easiest one. Eventually, I came to a large "V" in the route. I believe this is a key to the route. After you find this notch, climb through it, down a little bit and up onto the ridge. At this point, the Ship's Prow is right in front of you. The Ship's Prow is the prominent tower on Wetterhorn's south side. Here, We dropped down on the east face and traversed underneath the tower and then back up to a large flat area (with great campsites!) at the other side of the Ship's Prow. At this point there are two distinct keyhole formations in the ridge. The route takes you through the northernmost (and smallest) keyhole. Once you're here, the rest of the route and the crux in in plain view. |
| The crux of the route is a steep and shallow gully leading to the summit. It's about 150 feet high. It looks pretty scary
from this vantage point but I thought it was very easy. It's a lot like a giant
ladder - it's about that easy to climb. I hung back for a few minutes and let Kirk
and Ken take the lead where I took this picture of them on the way up (right). Kirk
was in the lead and he zoomed up it. After about 125 feet of climbing, you come to a
smooth ledge that's about 2 feet wide at most. If you want, you can continue
climbing straight up. This is what everyone did execpt for me. I saw a cairn
at the lefthand corner of the ledge about 20 feet away and walked the ledge around the
corner to some slightly easier cliffs. I climbed up about 25 feet and suddenly
appeared on the top of Wetterhorn. Kirk was already on top celebrating and Ken was just
coming over the crest as Kirk and I high-fived. Though this route was thrilling and a lot of fun to climb up, I was surprised at how easy it really was. Some guidebooks talk about using a rope on this section. While I suppose it's good to be cautious in this sense, using a rope for this section is just a waste. The only reason to use a rope here is if you are practicing for something more difficult. The climbing is so easy that it's virtually impossible to fall and I'd imagine that a rope would actually make this climb more dangerous because you'd be prone to tripping on the rope or getting tangled in it. These silly scenarios are much more likely, I think, than slipping and falling on this wall. Now, with snow and ice and wind, this picture changes dramatically. I bet that would indeed be a pretty scary climb. |
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In front of Wetterhorn |
Gerry Roach's guide book
talks about Wetterhorn's "tiny summit". I don't know what
inspired that description but Wetterhorn has a huge summit. There's enough room up here for 200 people.
This would be a great place to celebrate the climbing of all the fourteeners. We stayed on top for a while eating and taking pictures. I called home as well. After several minutes, it started getting kind of cold so we started back down. We all thought it would be scarier going down but it wasn't at all. In this case, it almost felt like descending a staircase. Granted, you had to be careful, but it wasn't dangerous, in my cautious opinion. All in all, it had only taken us about four hours to climb Wetterhorn. I was surprised at how fresh I still felt. I hoped that the weather would hold so that we would have an attempt on Uncompahgre. We hiked out the same trail that we found earlier and it indeed ended prematurely. So we hiked across the boggy meadow, hopped the creek, and regained the main trail that headed to Uncompahgre. The meadows up here were just stunning and the next three miles were fairly level - it was a pleasure to be hiking up here. |
| The trail to Uncompahgre swung way around the south side of the mountain to a small saddle, then began traversing under the south slopes up to the head of the Nellie Creek drainage. Here, the trail split - one leading to the summit, the other to Nellie Creek. I was ahead of everyone so I took off my pack and rested while waiting on Kirk. When Kirk arrived, he wasn't sure what the others would do. I informed him that I was dropping my pack so I could get to the summit as soon as possible. I decided to wait a couple of more minutes to see what Ken was going to do. Ken said he was going to go for it too. So, with the cloud looking more ominous by the minute, I started up. Ken started up not long after me and then so did Kirk and Jim. I stopped to talk to someone coming down for about 5 minutes. At this point, Ken had caught up to me and we headed up to the summit together. We kept checking our altimeters and realized we were getting close. |  |
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As we exited a short
talus field we had this view (left). We knew that had to be the summit. We
were both getting pretty tired at this point and were ready to arrive. The trail
headed around the right hand side of this picture. We could see the summit and the trail wasn't steep at all but we were still taking it pretty slowly. We passed a couple of rock wall shelters. There seemed to be several built up here. Finally, we made it to the true summit. The register is anchored to a concrete block. As I approached the north side of the summit, I realized that the rumors I had heard about Uncompahgre's summit were true. The north face is a sheer 1000-1500 foot drop to the bottom. When I say sheer, I mean 90 degrees and greater at some points. We thought this was so cool that we were running from side to side switching cameras and taking pictures. We laid down on our stomachs and peered over the edge - quite thrilling! |
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We stayed on the summit for 30 minutes then headed back down. We met up with Kirk and Jim who were about 50 feet at most from the summit. Jim didn't look too pleased and it seemed they were thinking of turning around. Ken and I zoomed the rest of the way down and enjoyed the hike out to the Nellie Creek trailhead. Shuttles are a lot of fun...new terrain the whole way. We waited at my jeep for about 45 minutes. Kirk and Jim finally showed up and Jim promptly announced that he was done hiking fourteeners for the weekend! They also told us that they ended up turning around on Uncompahgre because of the clouds. We couldn't believe it; they were so close. We decided to go pick up the other car and head down to Lake City for a good meal. We ended up eating at a small cafe. We chose to eat outside; the weather was really pleasant although it started raining after about 30 minutes. After we finished, we said our farewells. Kirk, Ken, and Jim seemed pooped so they headed back to Denver and I headed up to the Silver Creek trailhead to attempt Redcloud and Sunshine Peaks the following morning. |
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