Trip report
Jul 20, 2026 — The goal today was Triangle Peak, and only that 13er, but my legs warmed up on the long approach and I found myself tacking on two more unnamed 13ers just north of Triangle Pass. The Conundrum Creek 13ers are notoriously fiddly to link up in one push due to loose rock and tricky route-finding, but these three grouped together well enough to grab in a day. That left the string of northern 13ers along the ridge for a future trip.
The Copper Creek Trail (#983) starts just above Gothic, the old mining townsite outside Crested Butte that’s now home to the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory. The trail runs up the valley to Triangle Pass, then drops toward the popular Conundrum Hot Springs and eventually Aspen. The whole corridor sits inside the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. It’s a busy backpacking area that requires overnight permits, but I was just day hiking to the peaks.
I started at the lower trailhead along Schofield Pass Road and walked the dirt road for the first half mile. You could shave a mile round trip by parking at the official trailhead (38.96404, -106.98849), but I wasn’t sure how rough the road got. My crossover SUV probably would’ve handled it fine, but I’d already started walking.
From the Copper Creek Trailhead the trail set off toward Judd Falls, with Crested Butte’s pointed summit poking out on the horizon. I took the quick detour to the falls, then rejoined the main trail. The Copper Creek Trail is a wide, historic route, and it wasn’t long before it opened into a gorgeous clearing with a view of the valley ahead. The trail crossed the creek a few times, though most of the distance was forest walking.
At the junction with the Conundrum Trail I kept right, since left heads to Copper Lake. Shortly after, I emerged from treeline onto a talus slope at another trail junction, where the Conundrum Trail begins climbing through the talus. This is a much narrower, less-maintained stretch than the wide road below, but it’s still definitely popular. The Conundrum Trail arcs beneath a band of cliffs before making its final push to Triangle Pass.
From the pass I headed south up Triangle Peak. A steep, loose social trail dragged me up to the ridgeline, at one point steep enough that I had to claw my way through. Once on the crest, I followed the ridge toward the summit and took a Class 2/2+ chute in the center up to the top, though the cleaner rock to its left would’ve probably worked fine too. I could see Castle Peak and Conundrum Peak, the Maroon Bells, and of course, my next two 13ers: Peak 13212 and Peak 13551. Beyond those, farther along the ridgeline, Hillard Peak and Keefe Peak waited for another day.
I dropped back to Triangle Pass and started directly up toward Peak 13212. From below, I knew I’d have at least one trickier section but I figured I’d give this more direct approach a try rather than dropping down along the Conundrum Creek Trail and having to regain substantial vertical gain. Initially there was some Class 2/2+ along the ridge. The rock along the crest here was interestingly-colored and more solid than it looked. The route steepened into a Class 3+ obstacle on the crest, which felt a little exposed, but the hardest scrambling was confined to a chimney-like feature, so I committed to it without much thought. The summit was just ahead on easier terrain.
Onward to Peak 13551, which I decided I couldn’t skip because it was “right there”, and hopefully I could complete before an incoming storm arrived. I dropped down to Conundrum Pass, which separates the two 13ers. I looked up at the option to ascend directly via the peak’s south ridge, and in hindsight I wish I’d done so. The storm had me stressed, so I defaulted to the line I knew would work based on my friend Whiley’s information, and it was awful (as she had reported). I am unsure what the south ridge would have been like and I am genuinely curious if it even goes, since from Peak 13551’s summit looking down it looked a little nuts.
I wrapped around to the right (east) of Peak 13551, contouring on a grassy slope followed by a Class 2 talus field. An eroded, lighter-colored slope leading to the northern ridge of the peak came into view, and I made my way up to it through the talus field. What ensued was a miserable Class 2 slope for about 400 feet. It involved some more substantial clawing, worse than on Triangle Peak earlier by far, for a few hundred feet. Some embedded small outcroppings gave me the occasional handhold. Coming down after was a bit easier, but I still took my time because of the inherent dangers of this high of an angle. I reached the northern ridge and scrambled on some more Class 2 to gain the summit.
I backtracked from Peak 13551, then side-hilled for a while in an attempt to not lose much elevation, eventually intercepting the Conundrum Creek Trail. I followed this back up to Triangle Pass and hustled down as substantial thunder rolled in.