The plan was to hike “Tomboy Peak,” Chicago Peak, T 7 and T 8 if the weather Gods decided to cooperate. This was a birthday trip for Regina that would also entail driving Imogene Pass. Neither one of us had any intention of walking the road. I’ve personally, been off-roading for a long time. I’ve heard of Imogene and I was excited to finally get up there and navigate it and to see the famed Tomboy Mine.

Unfortunately, T 7 (13,359’) and T 8 (13,317’) ended up falling off the radar due to time constraints (we had to get the rented Jeep back into Ouray by 4:00 pm). But Chicago and “Tomboy” didn’t disappoint.

Knowing the Telluride (west) side was supposed to be extremely exposed with multiple shelf sections, we decided to leave Telluride at 4:30 am in order to not run into anyone else on the road. That turned out to be a great idea as we never ran into anyone. We had the road and pass all to ourselves!

Even driving super slow across the palisades (at one point, I thought I was going to scape the entire drivers side of the Jeep) it took us just over two hours to drive to the top of the pass, and that includes stopping at different points for pictures.

Once at the top (13,114’), we drove along the wide crest for no more than a couple hundred meters (give or take) and parked the Jeep. From the top, one can easily see T 7 and T 8, Chicago Peak, the Sneffels Range, Telluride Peak and Fort Peabody (super interesting!).

The ridge starts out fairly mellow. There is some old mining debris you have to weave around but eventually, the mellow dirt turns into choss. The traverse is about one mile to the summit of Chicago Peak. Roughly half-way across the ridge, the terrain gets super crumbly, loose and fractured. I think it may go at class-2+. To the southwest, the ridge disappears into sheer cliffs. To the northeast, it’s loose, rocky slope. There are some minor pinnacles along this section but everything is avoidable by staying on the northeast side. There is a social trail of sorts, but it drunkenly disappears into the choss as soon as you find it only to reemerge later along the ridge. If loose rock doesn’t bother you, you’ll have fun with this. If loose rock isn’t your cup of tea, you probably won’t care for this section.

After we passed the class-2+ section, the ridge switches back to easy alpine slopes. We made the summit of Chicago Peak easily by 7:45 am. The smoke made pictures kind of pointless. After a quick bite to eat, we kicked on. We stayed to the easy ridge for another .5 mile until the satellite ridge leading over to “Tomboy” came up. From this main ridge, we contoured southwest and started to drop down losing altitude to the saddle. We dropped 436’ to the addle. This descent was loose. Nothing on this shoulder seemed even remotely stable. The saddle had some recent wood pikes from, I’m assuming recent mining or property surveying.

The good thing about “Tomboy Peak,” is that from the saddle, it only rises 321’. The rock is of slightly better quality too. We stayed for a while as the views were quite good. I rebuilt the cairn and replaced the old, broken register.

Thinking we were still going to try for T 7, we made haste out of there and retraced our steps. I scampered and climbed up a couple small pinnacles on the way back to work my climbing legs and fingers but gave up after the second pinnacle. The holds were just too "portable" for my comfort, some really rotten rock. But alas, by the time we made it back to the Jeep, we decided getting T 7 wouldn’t be a good idea. The ridge back took longer than we expected and the drive down the east side of Imogene took longer as well. But, with all the mines up there and some amazing waterfalls, sometimes it’s best to take Plan-B and enjoy the scenery.

2,443 elevation gain

4.2 miles