East Buffalo Peak - Colorado's 399th highest mountain at 13,300 feet
The Buffalo Peaks, two mountains kind of off on their own, most commonly seen on the drive to Buena Vista, CO, are in the Mosquito range. In the above picture, the East peak is on the left, the West peak is on the right. These mountains are rarely climbed for some reason. I've driven past them countless times for the past 27 years and looked up at them, and then continued on my way to wherever. They are, for whatever reason, under-appreciated. But not by me anymore. I set out to do them on November 15, 2021 knowing that this late in the year, daylight is scarce and I might not get both. On the summit of East at 11:00 am, I made the decision to return to my Jeep instead of hitting the West Peak, which would have added a minimum of 2 hours to the trip. I probably could have done it, but the return off of West involved 1.5 miles of no-trail hiking through a forest which makes staying on-route very difficult, for me at least. Plus I was solo hiking which is an added danger. So if anything went wrong, I was looking at spending the night in the Colorado wilderness in November. Which I was prepared for, but didn't want to do. Elevation gain was about 2800 feet in 8.5 miles or so.
Early on the trail was dry, but then it was a snow hike. Not bad, just a couple of inches with a good bootpack.
Once the trail ended at about 11,600 feet, that was it for any trail. As far as navigation goes, I'm on my own. Now it was time to bushwhack through the willows.
Above the Willows and all the trees, it's now time to climb to the beginning of East Buffalo's northeast ridge, which is a pleasurable hike up grassy terrain.
Now that the hike up the ridge to the summit begins, here's the inevitable obstacle. I bypass it to the left, because, well, I can't bypass it to the right.
After bypassing another obstacle (worse than the first but I didn't get a picture of) the summit comes into view. A note about the second obstacle: As I traversed around the left side of this one, just beyond the following picture, the rock was very loose which meant that with each step, a cascade of about 10 or so rocks began to slide down the mountainside. It was a very helpless feeling as I scanned the surrounding area looking for solid rock to climb on, and seeing little of that. I noticed that I was starting to despair, and continuing on like that would have been dangerous so I stopped, collected myself, and thought about what to do next. Not wanting to turn around without a summit, I decided to climb to my right toward the ridge which was also loose but a shorter route to where I knew the rock would be more solid.
But now that I'm back on the ridge again, there's the summit! Not that far off.