Armstrong, Gothics, and Sawteeth

[spaddock]

I'm thinking of doing this route next weekend. Anybody done this route before?

I'd like to do it in a day but am considering spending a night at the campsite near Indian Head.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.


S.

 

[Silverback]

I have. I took the AMR road up to the Weld Trail (make sure you stop at Rainbow Falls). The trip from the intersection of the trail Between Sawteeth and Pyramid to the summit of Sawteeth was less than a half hour. Backtracked and followed the trail up Pyramid, which I think has the best view in the High Peaks. It is steep, but relatively quick. The hike to Gothics from Pyramid was very quick. From Gothics to Armstrong is a very nice and easy hike. There is a bit of a sub-peak on Armstrong that you need to go over before getting to the actual summit, which has views overlooking Gothics. Backtracked off of Armstrong to the Gothics/Armstrong col and headed down via the Beaver meadow trail. It is a steep downhill, but more tedious than tough, I thought.

The whole loop car to car took less than 12 hours, with plenty of summit time, an unusually leisurely pace, and stops at Beaver Meadow and Rainbow Falls thrown in. It was my favorite hike of the 40 that I have done so far.

Pick a nice day to get full impact of this beautiful hike.

Good luck.

 

[spaddock]

Thanks for your speedy reply Silverback.

I was actually considering doing the route in reverse of what you did. I figured it would be easier to go up the steep Beaver Meadow trail then down it. Or was it no problem going down?

Also figured I could definitely bag Armstrong and Gothics in a day but throwing in Sawteeth might be too much if we get a late start.

S.

 

[rhihn]

We did the very same route that Silverback did, though in July. I concur with everything in his post. Our hike to Sawteeth was a last-minute afterthought, and we found it to be not bad at all. You will have less daylight than we had, so I would suggest a very early start, particularly because you will probably want to linger on these spectacular summits!

 

[Rik]

I did this in the direction you mention and reverse of the other posts. I agree to save a nice day for this one as it is spectacular. I did it in February and it took 8.5 hours.

 

[Silverback]

Pick your poison

Thanks for your speedy reply Silverback.

I was actually considering doing the route in reverse of what you did. I figured it would be easier to go up the steep Beaver Meadow trail then down it. Or was it no problem going down?

Also figured I could definitely bag Armstrong and Gothics in a day but throwing in Sawteeth might be too much if we get a late start.

S.

If you go in the reverse direction, you would need to go down Pyramid, which is steeper (but shorter) than the Beaver Meadow trail. The thing I found about Beaver Meadow was not that it was super-steep, it just was a long, continuous downhill.

Another thought. If you do Sawteeth first, and run into a time bind, leave Armstrong for another day and head down the Beaver meadow trail, which is a little bit closer to home. You can always climb Armstrong via the Wolfjaws.

Just a thought.

Enjoy.