Summary

Mount Shavano, and Tabeguache Peak Elevation Shavano14,236ft. and Elevation Tabeguache 14,162ft.(Jun. 7, 2003) "East Slopes" trail from Blank Gulch TH. The Shavano to Tabeguache combination is a class 2 trail that runs (9.7 miles rt. with 4,430ft. gain). On Saturday afternoon and night the weather was great....I woke up to dense fog. I left the trailhead in the morning after a couple of other people had already departed for the summit. I ended up catching and passing a couple of them, however it was nice to know that other people were on the trail. The trail from Blank Gulch is just a steady pace all the way to the top. The traverse over to Tabeguache was not too difficult but the return trip to Shavano is tiresome.

During my night stay at the trail I had the usual occurrence of people showing up all night long. This night some people showed up around 11:00pm, setup a tent and went to bed. In the morning these climbers packed up there tent and left camp before I even got out of the back of my truck. Once I did get and on the trail, I managed to catch up with two pairs of climbers in about 45 minutes.

On the climb up it was fun to watch how the fog and clouds would run up the valley walls and then retreat again just as fast. As I approached the saddle between Shavano and a near by 13teener, the wind picked up. By the time I reached the saddle the wind was gusting up to 50mph and snow was starting to fall. In the saddle a stopped behind a small wind block and put on some extra clothing before making the last push of 900ft. to the summit. I was glad that I did that, because by the time I reached the summit the 35 degree temperature matched with the 20mph wind made for quite the wind chill. While on the summit the visibility was not that good and at times I could not see Tabeguache.

The traverse over to Tabeguache was not bad. The Shavano side of the traverse is steeper and at this time of year Tabeguache had a number of snow field on its side of the traverse. I kept to the rock on the Tabeguache side, but found coming back to Shavano much easier if I used the snow fields.

Once back on top of Shavano after doing the traverse and back, I made a couple of phone calls. This is the first year that I have hiked with a cell phone and it was fun to call a couple people from 14,000ft+. One call was made to my climbing buddy, Tim, who had already done this climb a couple years ago from the Jennings creek TH. I made another call to my girl friend, Courtney, who is in New York City having her own adventure dealing with crowed city living.

On the way down I saw a couple climbers sliding down the large snow filed call the Angle of Shavano, however I resisted the temptation preferring to stay on the gradual trail back down the mountain side. Also on the way down, I stopped to check out the really cool old forest that shows the signs of avalanches and glacier like activity. Back at the trailhead and camp I rested a little bit before making plans to break camp and move over to the Antero TH. Antero Report