Are you excited to climb a nearby summit over 13,000 feet?
Centennial Peak is an excellent choice. Mileage is short, elevation gain is moderate, and most of the climb is on-trail. This half-day hike also is suitable for most dogs.
Optional Sharkstooth Peak, notorious for loose, rotten rock, beckons the skilled and daring. Both mountains are approached from the Sharkstooth Trail on the west side of the La Plata range.
The trail leaves from the east side of the parking lot at 10,900 feet. On a well-established pathway, enter an old-growth spruce forest. The trail is rocky as it passes beneath the toe of the Sharkstooth rock glacier, then spongy and soft on the age-old forest duff surface. The canopy is atwitter with bird songs. Mid-summer, the track is hemmed in by streamside brookcress and caraway, head-high purple monkshood and sprays of osha.
At one mile, Hesperus Mountain, colorful, banded, and massive, is framed by deep-green conifers. Hikers give little notice of switchbacks that lift them to sunny swatches and then glades densely populated with bluebells and corn husk lilies.
In the alpine, reverie continues as the path plows through unimaginably lush gardens of hybridized Indian paintbrush, king’s crown, columbine and phlox.
Most people will effortlessly cover the 1.8 miles to the Sharkstooth/Centennial saddle at 11,936 feet in 45 minutes to an hour. Sizable cairns signal the final passageway to this unmistakable juncture. Here we leave the Sharkstooth Trail, which proceeds east to join the Colorado Trail at Taylor Lake quite near Kennebec Pass.
The yellow dots scattered over the tundra are the cheerful alpine sunflower, Old Man of the Mountain. Warning: There is a generous sprinkling of elegant death camas. One touch of the flower and then your tongue will make you sick. If your dog eats the plant, death will shortly follow.
From the saddle, Centennial Peak is.8 mile away, with an additional 1,126 feet of climbing. It is straightforward and fun with intermittent stretches of social trail up the broad, north ridge. Turn south and walk across the tundra and onto the trail. Clamber up a swath of large talus chunks. The grade decreases at another expanse of tundra broken by patches of rock sheltering alpine sorrel.
The ridge narrows for the final 600 feet but there is no sense of exposure. If anything, it gets more playful. There is a social trail that offers an off-ridge option to the right/west. However, I greatly prefer staying on the rib for the remainder of the summit ascent.
The higher you go, the more outrageous and intimate your experience becomes. Light bounces off the columnar shafts, towers, and spires of imposing Lavender Peak, only half a mile east of the horizontal bands pressed down by mighty Hesperus Mountain. The contrast is bedazzling.
Reach 13,000 feet and blast up the red path to the summit. Whether or not this is your first 13er, summit euphoria is guaranteed.
The cliff-framed, rugged face of the La Plata Mountains is seen from the crest where the southern vista is unfathomably wild. The range is bifurcated by the La Plata River far below, the great eastern ridge rising on the other side.
Banded Mountain was renamed Centennial Peak in celebration of America’s bicentennial in 1976. Seen from afar, Centennial has the same horizontal striping as Hesperus Mountain. Both are comprised of La Plata Mountain laccolith. The bands are alternating layers of magma and baked sedimentary rock called hornfels.
Return as you came. Back deep in the forest, take a short interpretive trail diversion and stroll by the Windy Williams Mill. The mine and boarding house were abandoned after only 130 days because valuable ore was scarce.
Sharkstooth Peak Option: Magnetic Sharkstooth attracts a tiny percentage of the travelers who utilize its namesake trail. It has a nasty reputation for pummeling climbers with tumbling and flying talus. This peak is for experienced mountaineers only.
Climb with no more than two or three people. The slope is at the angle of repose. Holds are utterly rotten; talus is on the move. From Saddle 11,936’, it is .4 mile, 526 feet up, and takes less than half an hour to scale. Do not climb the ridge directly above the saddle or the tempting one to the northwest. Rather, climb the southwest face. I employ a combination of gully and interior ribs. The pitch gets steeper halfway up, where self arrest becomes problematic. Use constant, cautious concentration.
La Plata’s largest rock glacier flows out in waves east and west from the fang and its northwest ridge.
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