Hesperus Mountain – 13,238

RT Length: 11.08 miles

Elevation Gain: 3440’

I parked at the 2WD Sharkstooth Trailhead the night before and waited out a thunderstorm. If you’re not familiar with the area, be sure to double check your directions: Google Maps kept trying to route me on ATV roads, and I got turned around several times trying to get to the actual trailhead. When I got there, I found there weren’t any parking spaces (as in, no place to park period… there weren’t any other vehicles there), so I had to park in a turnout a couple dozen yards from the trailhead. The drive was 2WD on a dirt road up until this point. This is what the lower trailhead looks like.

The next morning, after battling a night of storms and mosquitoes, I was up and on the trail at 5:30am. I realized rather quickly the 4WD road to the upper trailhead wasn’t all that difficult to navigate, and I could have easily driven all the way there. There were also several dispersed campsites along the way.

Now at the upper trailhead, I started following West Mancos Trail 621, which was the trail to the right.

Hearing mixed reviews about how to climb this peak, I decided to take the ridge up, and the gully down. This meant descending about 600 feet and 2 miles from the upper trailhead to my turnoff point. I just kept following the West Mancos Trail. There were plenty of signs along the way to remind me I was still on the West Mancos Trail.

At about 10400’ of elevation, after I’d been hiking for a total of 3.9 miles, just when I was thinking I should leave the trail and head for the ridge, I saw a large cairn, indicating the cutoff point for heading towards the ridge.

I turned left, and bushwhacked my way southwest towards the ridge. There was no visible trail here, but I soon made it out of treeline.

At treeline I came to a huge basin of rocks. To get to the ridge, I was going to have to head southwest, through this basin of loose, unstable rock. I did my best to stay low, and try to skirt the piles of rocks, but eventually I had to go up and over.

I now had a clear view of the ridge.

This is choose your own adventure, and none of it was pleasant. It was full of loose, rolling rocks. This is the route I took to gain the ridge.

Once on the ridge, I turned left, and encountered the most difficult part of my day: Tons of mosquitoes and 350’ of elevation gain in 1/10^th of a mile on dinner plate sized, extremely loose talus. There was no clear path or game trails, I just kept heading up. It was so miserable, I decided then and there I was not going to go back down this way if I could help it.

I was greeted at the top with a nice, gently sloping ridge that was easy to follow southeast towards Hesperus Mountain. There were some rocky sections, but clear game trails to follow.

I came to the end of the ridge and where the fun began.

There were quite a few game trails here, and the sun was in my eyes the entire time, so I’m not sure if I picked the correct route. If you go to the right of the class 3 section you can keep it class 2, but it’s easy to get lost. I decided to head straight up the rocks, then found a game trail that wound me around up to the summit. As I kept getting higher and higher up the mountain I found more and more trails, all seeming to lead to the same place. As long as you’re headed up and east, you should be good. This is the route I took:

And some step by step pictures of the route I took, first navigating the class 3 section

I was then able to pick up game trails that led me to the summit. I took a different path up than I did on my way back down, but all the game trails that went up led to the summit. As long as you’re keeping it class 2 you should be fine.

The summit was to the left of the trail, filled with large, loose boulders, and a wind shelter.

I summited Hesperus Mountain at 9:15am

Hesperus Mountain:

After spending considerable time on the summit, I turned and headed back down to the ridge. Once again, taking a slightly different route than I had on the way up, as trails were easier to see with the sun behind me instead of in front of me.

I made my way down the class 3 section

Ahead of me I could see the route I’d taken in, along the ridge

I looked to my right. I had a choice to make. I didn’t want to descend the same way I’d ascended, so I went over and took a look at the gullies. There were at least three to choose from, and I picked the middle one to descend, as it didn’t have any snow and I had a clear view of my exit route back into the trees.

Here’s the route I took down the gully. Since it had rained the night before, the scree was a bit muddy, and easy to grip.

And a look back at the gully I came down. As you can see, I had several options to make it down from the ridge.

At the base of the gully I followed the rocks to the north (right), finding cairns along the way that led me towards a trail in the trees.

I followed this trail through the willows and into treeline north, back to the West Mancos River Trail.

Back on the West Mancos River Trail, I followed it back to the upper trailhead, crossing the West Mancos River, and gaining elevation as I went.

At the Upper Sharkstooth Trailhead, I followed the 4WD road northeast, past Twin Lakes, just under 2 miles back to the 2WD trailhead.

I made it back to my truck at 11:30am, making this an 11.08 mile hike with 3440’ of elevation gain in 6 hours.

On to the next trailhead!