August 7, 2021
Coney Benchmark (13,224 feet) + UN13260 B (13,260 feet)
Route: N/A
5 miles; 960 feet elevation gain
Total time: 2 hours 20 minutes
We were camping off Carson Pass for the weekend, a spot we went to last year. There are many 13ers off this pass, we did two of them last year and decided to do two more this year (one was a repeat). Note: you absolutely cannot make it up Carson Pass without a 4WD high clearance vehicle with off roading tires. For this reason it is pretty quiet in terms of cars but there are a lot of UTVs and 4 wheelers. It makes these mountains pretty quiet overall. The Colorado Trail does run through this area so most of the other hikers we saw were through hikers.
Other than haze from the wildfires the weather forecast was clear so we didn’t rush to wake up early. After breakfast we drove up to around 13,000 feet where the Colorado trail connects to the pass and started hiking. You are obviously starting very high up so this hike wasn’t extremely strenuous in terms of elevation gain but it was a great hike. You do descend and ascend a few times though. It was a cloudless day but very hazy. It was also very windy, but not too cold, some gusts were probably up to 25mph.
You follow the Colorado trail most of the way and then branch off for a scramble to the summit. We hiked out to UN13260B first and then hit Coney Benchmark on the way back. It was a bummer that we didn’t get many views because this area has stunning views of the San Juan Mountains but it was still beautiful. We will probably be back to this area because I love camping here and there are still more 13ers to climb!
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