Hike Red Peak via Gore Range Trail White River National Forest, CO

Aug 13, 2020 — Austin and I started out from the popular Buffalo Mountain Trailhead, which fills up quickly. The trail starts through a small burned area before entering the trees, crosses a junction (keep straight, left leads to Buffalo Mountain, and right circles back as a loop), and descends a few hundred feet. The trail then continues through some marshes with makeshift bridges and required a teeny bit of thinking to stay on the trail before it reaches a junction with the Gore Range Trail. We followed this trail west, paralleling South Willow Creek. After a few miles of alternating between forest and meadows with nice views back toward Buffalo Mountain, the trail curved south. Approximately here is where the "standard" route for Red Peak begins, leaving the trail and continuing steeply up a slope. We agreed that we would try to descend this way later, instead opting to take a longer route to check out a small unnamed lake. Ultimately, we thought the standard route was far less good than the rout we took. I'll describe both anyway.

We continued along the Gore Range Trail to the unnamed lake I mentioned, enjoying the wildflowers and view toward Red Peak before we picked up the Gore Creek Trail (which isn't marked with a sign, by the way), which headed north, away from the unnamed lake, and took us up to the saddle south of Red Peak. From here, we continued along the ridge, mostly enjoying the steep grassy ridge with some easy Class 2. A talus field toward the top made for some slower-moving to prevent knocking bouders onto each other. The top of this talus field was a false summit of Red Peak. We traversed the ridge on Class 2+ over to the true summit.

From Red Peak, we decided to attempt the standard route, dropping to the saddle between Red Peak and its false southern sub-peak. The route descends steeply on dirt and minor scree into a flat meadowy section. We curved right to avoid cliffs and entered a Class 2 bouldery basin. There are lots of options to descend from, and our route worked fine. Overall it's a decent route, but the ridge had really nice views and less tedious Class 2 than this standard option. We weaved around boulders and minor cliffs and on grassy slopes until we entered some trees and descended back to the Gore Range Trail.