Mount Sniktau
September 7, 2026
4035m
Silverthorne / Loveland Pass, CO
Mt. Sniktau is neither very prominent (only P100m) nor a 14er but sees fair amount of visitors most likely due to the easy access. It looms directly above Loveland Pass which has a paved access despite the 3650-m elevation. This winding road is even plowed and maintained in winter and the “standard route” is doable all year round. This route mostly follows the scoured ridgeline so the avalanche hazards are usually minimal. When I visited Colorado for the first time in March 2022 I was contemplating about Mt. Sniktau but I wasn’t too keen on embracing the cold winds and the terrible snowpack one day after another, so opted to drive south towards the New Mexico deserts after only spending 2 days peakbagging in the high country of Colorado. This time I returned in summer conditions.
This was the 3rd day of the September long weekend and Clair and I were originally planning to hike something together but then I realized that her flight back to Boston was actually in the early afternoon instead of overnight in the evening. To further complicate things Clair wanted to visit her friend in Denver so that further limited what we could do. The final decision was to leave the hotel in Silverthorne as early as we humanly could, and hike Mt. Sniktau. I wasn’t anticipating Clair to be able to summit with me but she could go as far as she wanted. It turned out that we only managed to get up at 5:30 am so even I myself had to hurry up on the summit push and Clair was still late by almost an hour meeting up with her friend afterwards, but that’s okay.
The drive to Loveland Pass was quite scenic at dawn but I didn’t stop for photos as we weren’t doing particularly well on time. The parking situation was also sketchy at the pass on a long weekend Monday but we somehow got the last possible spot to squeeze the vehicle in. Clair decided at the last minute to give it a try so we hiked the first 100 m elevation gain together, but then we did some math work and it’s fairly clear that we wouldn’t be having enough time, so Clair opted to wait while walking Cheesecake around. I carried on and it didn’t take me long to dash up to the first bump which doesn’t even have a name. I then followed the ridgeline to the south summit of Mt. Sniktau. This “peak” has more than 40 m prominence but I felt bad to “claim” it on peakbagger.com, so left the dot red. The true summit is the north peak and the elevation loss/regain between the two peaks was frustrating to say the least.
Wasting no time I quickly returned. The traverse between the two peaks took much longer than I thought and in fact, I wasn’t even aware of having this major false summit along the way. I barely did any research besides briefly looking at the maps. Once back to the first bump I mostly jogged down the trail to conclude the round trip in 1 hour 40 minutes. I then rushed us down to Idaho Springs and then into the urban areas of Denver. We showed up at Clair’s friend’s house about an hour later than promised but that wasn’t a problem. I eventually drove Clair to the airport and then did an exhausting 8-hour solo drive afterwards to position myself for the Utah high point on the following day.
