The first attempt up La Plata was in Aug 2001. We attempted it from the Winfield Trailhead. My 11 yr old daughter and I started just after dawn following the two and a half hr drive from Conifer. Roach describes a traihead at Winfield and shortly after starting out you come to a gate. We went through it, as the trail at that point looked more worn than the trail that passd by it. WE followed what we thought were the directions that Roach had in his Colorado 14ers book. There were a few discrepancies, but in general we thought we were going the correct way. WE summitted in about 3 hrs, making what we thought was pretty good time. The approach to the summit had a fair amount of talus, and the summit itself was a long ridge that was somewhat towery with spires. At the top of this ridge, much to our suprise, we noticed a group of people on top of a peak that looked higher than the one we were on to the north west. "CRAP! That is La Plata" I told my daughter. We decided to try to get over to the other peak, and in our haste made some bad decisons, walking west on the ridge to take a short cut. This was my first experience with Class 4 stuff, and it scared the snot out of me, so after coming to my senses, we back tracked out of there, and went back down the way we came. We started to notice the weather was turning ugly so we gave up on getting La Plata. We vowed to get it the next summer, it would be our first climb 2002.
I looked on the map when we got home and decided we had climbed Rinker peak, but recently Kane identified the ridge we summited as Point 13686 please see his description on his Mountain page for LaPlata and Point 13686.
Well July 4th weekend 2002, we decided to play it safe and get La Plata from the trailhead off of Indepedence pass (Lake Creek TH). Unfortunately for me, my now 12 yr old daughter was now surpassing me in fitness, and I was out of shape. The start of the hike was brutal, she was kicking my behind, I was struggling keeping up with her through the woods. After we left La Plata Gulch things started to get steep, but we started to pass people as we ascended which gave me a second wind. Then we just started to reel em'(other hikers)in, and we made quick work of the hike. We achieved a sort of shoulder on its Northwest side which was exposed and brutally windy. Then we quickly gained summit which was actually rather calm, and very beautiful, we could see the awesome Ellingwood Ridge that was pointed out to us by a climber from which he had summitted. This brought us back down to reality, as we were thinking highly of ourselves having been the first ones up that day. The trip down was fun and uneventful.
Back to the car- total time 5 1/2 hrs. Images
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Sawatch Range
