I don’t know when I started waking up, but it felt cold out and my perfectly level little campsite kept me so cozy that I didn’t even want to poke my head out of my sleeping bag until after 6:30. The surrounding mountains kept the sun from hitting my tent until 7:20, when I was just starting to make packing progress, and it was 8am before I started the climb out.
And it was a beast of climb. Uphill for a straight mile, the last third at nearly a thousand feet elevation gain per mile. The whole thing took me over an hour.
Then I descended to San Luis Pass, where the Creede Cut-Off joins via a mining road that a lot of day hikers use to get to San Luis Peak. I took my morning break before beginning another steep hill climb here, though much shorter, and the trail kind of leveled off as it worked its way through a forest. I took another break here, and then when I started working my way up to the shoulder of the looming fourteener, a day hiker came up behind me. I let him by but mostly kept up with him so we could chat the whole way up to where the peak was. Mostly we talked about places to see in Colorado.
I stopped before the climb to the peak because it was lunch time, and the peak bagger guy went on. I started the climb 30 minutes later, and it started out as steep as the morning climb had been, though the trail now consisted of nothing but piles of loose shale. There were a few places here and there with enough soil for a few wildflowers to grow, but mostly the whole peak was just a lifeless rock pile.
An hour later, I’d only made it halfway when the day hiker guy passed coming back down and we had another brief chat. He was playing oldies on his phone because “I heard bears don’t like Steely Dan.” He assured me I could be at the top in just twenty more minutes and hurried on, hoping to be camped outside Sand Dunes taking shrooms as the sun set that evening. I continued my crawl towards the summit.
It really was quite a nice day to bag a fourteener. Great views all around. Most importantly, a scattered thunderstorm didn’t roll in just as I reached the top and hit me with a lightning bolt. In fact, though there were clouds, there was no rain all day.
The climb down from the peak into Stewart Creek Valley was nearly as slow as the climb to the summit. It started on more of that loose shale, which is never easy walking, then turned into a series of switchbacks down the valley wall that occasionally seemed a bit steeper than they needed to be. Usually the steepest bits at least had uneven stairs to carefully lower myself down, but occasionally there was clay coated with tiny round pebbles ready to try to take my feet out from under me like a Wet Bandit encountering Kevin McAllister’s marble collection.
Things got much easier once I reached the valley floor, though, or at least the wall a dozen feet above the creek. Even once I was down in the forest walking close to the creek, there was no struggle because the trail had been so well maintained. There was only one blowdown to clamber over the whole way.
The last few miles went along the banks of dozens of beaver ponds. Beavers have taken over the whole valley in a series of terraced ponds, each spilling into the next. Rice growers would be impressed with their paddies. Eventually, they allowed the creek to flow unmolested out into the Cochetopa Creek. Around here, the trail ended in a road that led down to the Eddiesville Trailhead, where I found an old hiker by the name of Tinker with the contents of his pack spread all of the floor of one of the privies.
He intended to sleep there, expecting rain. And he was a chatty fellow. I hadn’t met him because he took the Creede Cut-Off and skipped most of the San Juans, but he is a devoted thru-hiker, and is eager to prevent a conversation from ending. Eventually, I tore myself away to go find a relatively flat spot to pitch a tent, though I did steal a roll of TP from his toilet abode before I left–I’m running low.
Looking ahead, progress should be much faster as there is only one even relatively steep climb between where I stopped for the night and Monarch Pass.
Trail miles: 14.7 (though it’s not clear how fast I actually walked)
Distance to Monarch: 72.6 miles
San Luis Peak 
photo sphere of San Luis Peak summit 
flowers that are unfortunately not yet strawberries 
Tinker