Treasury Mountain: Short and Sweet

We had plans for Labor Day weekend, which included Staci having to work on Sunday. Ugh.

We were set to go to LaPlata on Friday night, but never pulled the trigger. I don’t think either of us really wanted to do it. So, we changed plans to do the Helen-Father Dyer traverse on Saturday morning. The alarm went off… but we stayed in bed. Ugh.

A lazy Saturday morning started… but by 8 a.m. we were both like… “so, what are we going to do?”

Staci made a call and was able to switch her appointment from Sunday to Monday.

“How about CB?”

“YES!”

We started working on all the peaks around Crested Butte last year. Needed another list once we finished the 58 (more TRs to come), We packed up the burb and were on the road by 9:30 a.m.

We grabbed some slices to-go from Brick Oven Pizza and we hit the trailhead at Paradise Divide by 2:30 p.m. You have to love stable weather days in September!

It was warm, so we took more water than normal. We started up the old mining road to Yule Pass and walked around Cinnamon Mountain to the saddle with Treasury Mountain. We could see a few trails off the road to hike up to reach the top the saddle and then we started moving toward the ridge that would take us to the summit. We passed two guys coming down on mountain bikes. There is a weather station on the lower ridge, just like the one on top of Cinnamon.

Yule Pass route was probably a full road at one time, but erosion has wiped it away in some places leaving only a narrow trail on steep slopes. Watch your step. The trail was easy. A few steep spots on the ridge, but they were short. The terrain was interesting going from a road, to a ridge to very wide slope. I assume the rock on most of this is some form of shale, as the ground had come cool rock formations to walk on.

Up the next slope to see the backside of Treasury. It’s vertical! Then up to another flat spot before the summit. This flat spot looks like it might have been mined a bit as there were numerous depressions, but no real mine tailings. There were a few spots to put up a tent on non-rocky ground.

But the really cool thing about this peak, other than the views… the summit pitch. From this flat area, the summit was across and bulging out of the ground, a huge bump. The peak’s route had easy terrain up until the bulge. Now it was rocky and uneven. Large slabs of rock formed a staircase-like ramp toward the summit. A bit narrow, but nothing crazy. It was just cool.

Took about 2:15 to reach the summit, with about 1,910 of gain.

Once on the summit we took some time to look around at which peaks we had climbed, and to decide on future peaks. We have been in this area a lot last year and this summer. We tagged Purple Mountain recently, which was just across Yule Pass.

We talked about heading down and over to Treasure, but Staci didn’t want to hit that today. We’ll be back for that summit.

We turned around and made our way down the ramp toward the ridge. We took a detour…. Just an FYI, the highpoint on the ridge to Galena… is NOT Galena.

Back on the Treasury ridge, we watched the sun drop into the “V” of Yule Pass and cast shadows on Cinnamon. We returned to our camping spot on the Divide and pulled out chairs, table and stove to cook dinner. We drank a bottle of wine and stared up at the stars and the Milky Way. We saw several shooting stars before calling it a night.

Sunday was a lazy day, just hanging out, exploring, and playing in the creek. Had a great dinner at Marchitelli’s. Second time there, highly recommend it. We camped at Lake Irwin. Fished. Drank more wine under the stars.

Monday morning, we went to hike Mount Owen but turned back when we saw a gate across the road and lots of ‘no trespassing’ signs. I have an email into the Forest Service asking for details on this.

Another great weekend in CB, despite how crowded it’s getting over there. Since we didn’t hike on Monday, we stopped to hike up to Lost Lake off Cottonwood Pass. Nice short hike to a cool little lake. But the place is popular… go early or go late if you don’t want crowds.

Views of Treasury from earlier this summer....