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This brave little rubber ducky was found abandoned and all alone at around 11,500ft on the 4WD road to Sneffels. He then joined me at camp down in the trees around 11,300ft before climbing Sneffels SW Ridge the next morning.
The following pictorial mini TR gives a special overview of this fun route through the eyes of a rubber ducky. I'll then add a few summary thoughts at the end.
This 4Runner sunroof is pretty nice - I like the bug screen!
Blue Lakes Pass - oh, I may have to come back for those lakes!
Wow, this SW Ridge looks pretty cool!
Scary snowfield remnant, but at least I can hold onto the rocks!
Yikes! This pile of rocks looks loose, I think I'll go around!
Good thing I can sneak thru the gullies, some of these towers are too big for me!
Hmmm, maybe I don't want to drop down too low...
Oh, this is scary, I think I'll scramble higher on the rocks on the way down!
Whew, the summit at last - what a great view!
Bet you can't find where I'm at by the kissing camels!
This ridge has some sweet formations!
I can see the pass down below!
Oh my goodness, look how chossy that standard route looks - who would ever go up that!
This detour took just a little extra effort but the view was worth it! See me on top?
Back at the upper 4WD trailhead - yay, almost done!
Overall, this a vastly superior route to the standard - most of the folks on the mountain took the standard and complained about the loose choss going up that gully. The SW Ridge by comparison had just a little bit of that going up to Blue Lakes Pass on a pretty decent trail then the rest of the route was reasonably solid overall, with your average amount of loose rocks to beware of.
The scrambling is pretty mild but there are a lot of little optional features you could explore to spice it up, since this entire route is less than 6mi round trip.
Hope you enjoyed this very different style TR to my normal approach - actually got flagged for too few words, so had to add this closing section!
My GPS Tracks on Google Maps (made from a .GPX file upload):
Yep, orange helmet on from start of ridge until I hit the upper 4WD TH. I did put earbuds in for the descent, though typically managed at least a quick greeting to folks I passed - I guess you were one of them...
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