Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
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arpwalker
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Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
Hi everybody! Looking for an advice on 13ers or others in the area of Lake City. We are traveling right now from Pennsylvania and the plan was to do Uncompahgre, Wetterhorn, Sunshine, Sun Luis. We have already prepaid reservations for Lake City so we are not very flexible with location and the wild fire caused closure of the access to Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn. Any nice 12 or13ers which would not be closed in that area? We already did Handies and Redcloud in the past.
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Alex
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Re: Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
I don't know about current wildfire situation, but there are couple of 13ers close to Sunshine. If you start from the TH near the campsites, though, you will have to traverse Redcloud and continue on the ridge turning right. You will encounter two unnamed 13ers, but it is going to be long day. On the other hand, you can do Sunshine on one day and do 13ers on another one.arpwalker wrote: ↑Sat Jul 18, 2026 5:29 am Hi everybody! Looking for an advice on 13ers or others in the area of Lake City. We are traveling right now from Pennsylvania and the plan was to do Uncompahgre, Wetterhorn, Sunshine, Sun Luis. We have already prepaid reservations for Lake City so we are not very flexible with location and the wild fire caused closure of the access to Uncompahgre and Wetterhorn. Any nice 12 or13ers which would not be closed in that area? We already did Handies and Redcloud in the past.
There is another 13er, Whitecross, closer to Handies, but from the same TH as Redcloud and two unnamed 13ers. So, you could spend one day for Sunshine and at least two days going on 13ers.That TH is little bit further along the Cinnamon pass road, but before it becomes too difficult for light SUV.
From that TH you can start as for Redcloud, but after coming to the ridge turn left instead of right. It would be one day.
For the Whitecross, start from the same TH, but toward Handies and before the ridge turn right from the trail, traverse some scree, and follow the ridge toward Whitecross summit. It would be one more day.
One more point. If you plan San Luis, you might also consider Stewart peak just short from being 14er. TH is different, but very close and similar difficulty wise.
The only thing better than mountains are mountains to which you have never been!
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pw
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Re: Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
There are two high thirteeners that start from the same trailhead as Sunshine/Redcloud. Instead of taking that right turn towards Redcloud, you keep going straight. They are unnamed, so in a peak list they only show up by their elevation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pwahl/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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sunny1
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Re: Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
To provide a decent answer, what will you be driving - AWD, 4WD, high clearance?
What mileage & elevation gain would be appealing?
What mileage & elevation gain would be appealing?
The older you get, the better you get, unless you're a banana.
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arpwalker
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Re: Help! Asking for 12 or13ers advice from Lake City area
Thank you all for suggestions! For today we selected 13er Half Peak from Cataract Gulch TH. Tomorrow we'll do 14er Sunshine and Im stll deliberating what to do on day #3...