Wilson Peak
From Silver Pick Basin
We’d been discussing a climb of the Wilson group for a long time. We finally planned to climb all three fourteeners there the weekend of August 12th. We planned to drive out on Friday, climb Wilson Peak on Saturday, climb the Mount Wilson – El Diente traverse on Sunday, and drive back that night. That’s a pretty ambitious plan, but we felt up to it.
We arrived at the Silver Pick basin trailhead about 30 minutes before dark and easily found a place to car camp. The parking area looks initially really small, but small roads wind back in the woods with all sorts of camping spots. Ken slept in the back of his truck on his new air mattress and I lay down on top of two thermarests and slept great – except for the truck that showed up at 2am and the other truck that showed up at 5:15 am and got stuck in a narrow turn around while it’s headlights were beating down on us like the noonday sun.
We decided to just go ahead and get up anyway since the alarm was already set for 5:30. We began hiking around 6:05, 6:10 or so. Once you emerge out of the trees, the rest of the hiking is among talus and scree so it’s not exactly a scenic or lush approach, however, the road and trail is in great shape. The road continues past the gate for a while and eventually turns into a trail. We were able to stay on a trail the whole way up to the Rock of Ages saddle at 13,150 feet. We were surprised at how easy it was to get to the saddle. When we looked into Navajo Basin, we realized that we should have brought our camping stuff and just set up camp in the basin after completing Wilson Peak. Our plan was originally to pack up after Wilson Peak and backpack into Navajo Lake – just a change of scenery. But when we saw how easy it was, we changed our plans to day hike the traverse from Silver Pick.
Once we made it to the saddle, we traversed along the south side of the peak along a well-established trail. Then, after just a short time, we arrived at one of the Wilson Peak – Gladstone saddles. Once we were around the saddle, traversing again on the mountain, we had the view of the remainder of the route. Though there’s no one correct way to climb the remainder of the route, the best suggestion is probably to continue traversing and aim for the saddle below the last high point before the summit. The climbing up to this point was very easy. There was one little 3rd class section right after the saddle but it wasn’t hard or scary at all. We continued all the way up to the saddle below the false summit.
The remainder of the climb is a lot of fun. It’s challenging 3rd class scrambling and a good way to finish the mountain. We passed one party on their way down but we had the entire summit to ourselves for a long time.
Between Mount Wilson and El Diente these two mountains is the infamous traverse which we would be attempting the following day. Overall, this mountain was very easy and a lot of fun. It was only a 7-mile round trip and about 3600 feet of elevation. That may sound like a lot, but we had had an intense summer and this was probably the easiest to date…a good warm-up for what lay ahead.
