El Diente Peak and Mt. Wilson

August 5, 2021 / 14,159’ (El Diente) & 14,246’ (Mt. Wilson)

RT STATS: TOTAL TIME - 13 HR & 25 MIN, ~14 MILES, AND 5,552’ ELEVATION GAIN

TIME STATS: 5 HR & 41 MIN TH TO EL diente SUMMIT, 15 MIN AT el diente SUMMIT, 3 HR & 1 MIN OVER TO Mt. Wilson, 17 MIN AT Mt. wilson SUMMIT, 4 HR & 11 MIN BACK TO TH

rating (how much i liked the climb): 9/10 (happy to be back!)

El Diente Peak and Mt. Wilson were my 48th and 49th CO 14ers and my first in almost a year—my last one was San Luis Peak on 9/27/20. I was super excited for this trip and now that I’ve been back in South Carolina for 6 days now…..I’m still excited about it!!! Anyways, this trip starts on the morning of August 4th. I drove from Greenville, SC (where I live) to CLT and flew out around 9am to DIA. I perfectly timed the flights with my dad and we literally got into DIA within a couple minutes of each other at gates that were basically next to each other! Anyways, everything went smoothly and we started our LONG drive down to Telluride. I got a massive Chipotle bowl in some suburb of Denver called Wheat Ridge.

We got in to Telluride at around 6:30pm and spent the night at the Telluride Mountainside Inn. We basically immediately went to dinner right after this. On the way over, I took some CLASSIC pictures in front of the Telluride sign downtown (like I did before Wilson Peak a year ago). Anyways, we got to OUR FAVORITE TELLURIDE RESTAURANT (and the only one we've ever ate at but still) called La Cocina de Luz. So, this was essentially a repeat night of what we did before Wilson Peak a year ago. I ate the same exact meal (and all of it because gotta fuel for the big day) as last year—chicken enchiladas, brown rice, vegetables, and half of an entree salad (that I split with my dad…like last year :D). We finished dinner, I took a couple more pictures downtown, we went to the store to get some bananas (that all sucked…but I like eating bananas on the trail), and walked back to the inn. The temperature was noticeably dropping and I was starting to get cold.

We set an alarm to wake up at 2:30am that next morning, but got up about 15 minutes before the alarm. We were in the car and leaving Telluride at 2:53 am. The Kilpacker Basin TH (We did the South Slopes and Southwest Slopes route for El Diente and Mt. Wilson, respectively) that we were headed to was not that far away thankfully and we got there at 3:41am. It took a bit to get everything ready (make my cool cardboard sign), but we set off at 3:59am…in headlamps of course. This made me so happy and it felt like it hadn’t been almost a year since my last 14er. I didn’t take much pictures while it was dark (obviously), but I will say that it wasn’t that cold which was nice.

It started getting light enough so that you didn’t need a headlamp at about 5:50am…so I took it off. Somewhere above 11,000’ (maybe 11,500’?), the trail became more rocks and talus as opposed to a dirt path. I need to say, I got a new watch (Garmin Forerunner 55) and it doesn’t display the elevation like my old watch so that is honestly pretty annoying…I like to include the elevations in my trip write-ups!!!!

Our plan was to summit El Diente first and then go over to Mt. Wilson. We had briefly thought about doing the traverse in the week leading up to the trip, but had already decided against it. Somewhere around the 3 hour mark (about 5.25 miles in), we took a left to start ascending towards El Diente. From this point onwards, I will really just talk without mileage because my watch doesn’t understand climbing major elevation and mileage apparently… A few minutes later, I did put my helmet on YAY. I do know that we are around 12,600’-12,700’ thanks to 14ers.com route description! Also….LOOK. The reappearance of the kristin selfie with El Diente in the background woooo.

I will just post a lot of pictures of the ascent from this point onwards up until the summit! I took a lot of pictures….I must say, I nailed the route-finding for El Diente, Wilson, and Capitol (which will be its own post :) ). In the second row of pictures below, that’s me!!!!! (a very tiny me in the first picture).

After 5 hours and 41 minutes, we reached the El Diente summit! We were up on the summit for just about 15 minutes…the views from the summit were spectacular ;). It was cool seeing Mt. Wilson (where we were headed next) and Wilson Peak (which we summited a year and 4 days earlier). Yes, Wilson Peak and Mt. Wilson are 2 DIFFERENT 14ERS…don’t mix them up ;). Soon, we started the trek down.

On the descent, we did not go all the way back down to that point where we had started heading up to El Diente. Rather, we started cutting across a boulder/talus field maybe about 50 minutes after we left the summit. Enjoy the picture of me eating a banana and where a rock hit my inner ankle!!!!! Always need to post attractive pictures of myself like that one.

For a long while, it was hiking up talus and talus and talus and more talus…flashbacks to Mt. Princeton yikes. The route finding was pretty much just heading in the direction of Mt. Wilson and seeing cairns (that a lot of times blended in WITH ALL OF THE TALUS).

Once we were in the mid-13,000’ elevation range (an estimate again because my watch is lame) is where the route-finding began. I took the lead as route-finder again…just being honest, I’m pretty good at it. It’s super important to stay on route because you can easily end up on dangerous terrain that you “thought” looks alright. Additionally, the rock is already loose when you are on route (or at least on a safe path up). THAT’S MEEEEE IN THE SECOND ROW OF PICTURES BELOW ;)

3 hours and 1 minutes after leaving the El Diente summit/at the 8 hour and 57 minute mark since starting the day, we reached the Mt. Wilson summit! The views were crazy and even better than they were on the El Diente summit. It was awesome getting a better view of Wilson Peak (again completely different than Mt. Wilson). We had the summit to ourselves again like we did on El Diente. We took some pictures and got going. FYI, that’s El Diente Peak in the first row of pictures and Wilson Peak in the second row of pictures. I’m trying to make an effort of not wearing sunglasses in all of my summit photos because I got in that habit last year.

From leaving the summit until back in “safe territory”, i.e. it was an easier trail (still rocky but alright) was an hour and 37 minutes. This is where we took off our helmets. I don’t think we talked at all during that hour and 37 minutes. Doing these mountains really takes a ton of focus and no distractions. It felt like I kept testing rocks during that hour and 37 minutes (as well as for basically the majority of our trek so far….I just didn’t mention it).

The sky had been getting kind of darker and soon a storm (rain thunder hail yay fun) comes in. The storm/rain probably lasted just under a hour. And what do you know? When it stopped, it was super sunny and it was like it hadn’t stormed at all. I LOVE MOUNTAIN WEATHER.

I must say it is just odd seeing the first couple hours of the climb that were completely dark. With a headlamp, you are kinda just going and it’s funny seeing the where you walked and thinking “what the heck? there’s tons of flowers here?!”. Anyways, after 13 hours and 25 minutes, we were back at the TH. My watch says 12.4 miles, but, like I said earlier, it didn’t properly count the distance when we were climbing. Looking at the GPS map though, it marked the exact route that we did, but mileage was still off.

So, the next day, August 6th was a rest day. We started our drive to Glenwood Springs (where we would spend Friday night) and spent the night in Montrose. On the way to Montrose, we stopped at a Thai place in Ridgway called Thai Paradise. This Thai place was right next to the (bad) Mexican place that we ate at after Mt. Sneffels. I got some delicious curry THAT WAS WAY TOO SPICY. I apparently never learned my lesson after the place after Culebra Peak….CHECK OUT MY CULEBRA PEAK POST WHERE I ORDERED THE SECOND LEAST SPICY LEVEL. Like wtf is the spiciest level?? Anyways, it was good, but I was still hungry. We drove just a little more up to Montrose and I GOT MY SECOND DINNER LMAO. QDOBA!!!!!!!!! We kept calling hotels and they were sold out, but we eventually got one. LONG DAY.

We woke up the next morning and drove to Glenwood Springs. I wanted to see Grand Junction so we drove through Grand Junction and that was cool. More on Friday August 6th at the beginning of my Capitol Peak post. :)