Hello-

I'm looking at planning a shuttle trip this summer in the Gore Range. While perusing my topo, I got the idea of starting at the Rock Creek TH to Upper Slate Lake. Then continuing past S. America lake up and over into the Upper Piney Lake drainage. To top it off, I'd hop over to the Booth Lake drainage (via East Booth Pass), and finish at the Booth TH with a shuttle vehicle waiting.

It seems to me like a few of the valley-hops might involve some intense scrambling, but I can't find anything written on doing this route (maybe because it's too intense?). Does anyone have any insight into this route? Anything helps .

Thanks,
Mike

Whatever you do, DO NOT go down the Black Creek drainage. Seriously

All nonsense aside, if you go from South America Lake, and instead of crossing into the Upper Piney drainage, cross over the saddle between Peaks P and Q and traverse south across the plateau and then cross between East and West Partner Peaks into the Pitkin Lake drainage, the difficulty should not exceed Class 3. I think I remember hearing that crossing over into Piney from there is 4th class. This easier route will be just as beautiful and the Pitkin Trailhead is right next to the Booth trailhead.

East Booth Pass is not a problem, some loose class 2 in places. We climbed Peak P from Booth Lake this way, some 3rd class on Peak P. I honestly think if you are coming from Slate you should go up to the Q/P saddle and climb over Peak P (class 3 with route finding). That is probably the easiest route to link Booth and Slate. I think going from Slate to Piney would be tough, we climbed Peak J from Slate and were into some stiff class 4, not sure if there is easier passage? Our goal was J's summit so we were not looking for an easier route to a saddle.

Matt is correct, you can go through the saddle between East and West Partner and get into Pitkin that way. That was steep and loose too, and unfortunately for us covered in loose unconsolidated fall crap snow, so not sure what the actual difficulty rating would be, we were crawing up it in crappy snow conditions, but dry or with good snow I would imagine its not horrible. I want to go in that way from Pitkin to climb Peak S this year, if I beat you to it I will try and remember to post an update here.

First, is there as much snow now in the Gore Range as we have in the Indian Peaks? I'm questioning whether I should do a backpacking trip over the 4th of July weekend.

Second, if you go up the north pass from Booth Lake (not the west pass that goes to Piney Lake), stop at the top of the pass and look for a tiny gray weasel. I watched it but didn't take pictures, and when I got home and tried to identify it I found that all North American weasels are brown. Gray weasels are in the Himalayas.

Third, Black Creek has the best trail in the Gore Range. Very well-built, almost flat. It turns from Black Creek to go up South Rock Creek, so I imagine that bushwhacking to Bubble Lake, etc., would be challenging. We tried to bushwhack down Middle Black Creek from Mount Powell and gave up. Ask me if you want the GPS track for the Black Creek trail.

Lastly, I might volunteer to do a car trade, i.e., do your hike the opposite direction and trade keys. If you drive something better than my '05 Outback with 150K miles for sure I'll trade!