Warrior Mountain
September 5, 2026
3443m
Idaho Springs, CO
Warrior Mountain is another one of those P100m pimples in the “foothills” but this one is considerably taller as it’s much closer to Mt. Blue Sky / Mt. Evans. A paved road traverses basically right under the summit and the “ascent” is nothing fancier than a quick dash from Juniper Pass. Attaining the true summit does require some off-trail travel but the bushwhacking is minimal. Clair and I did it simply because we got denied accessing Mt. Blue Sky. We did have the reservation all sorted out but the road was closed as someone rolled a vehicle 100 m down the hills. Fortunately nobody died in the accident, but there’s no estimated time of opening. The staff said it would take perhaps 2 more hours so why not tag another peak in the vicinity.
I went back to the Peakbagger app and noticed this bump. It’s both officially named and boasts over 100 m prominence so that was the perfect objective. Spending another 1 or 2 hours at 3000+ m altitude could also help the acclimatization process so this might be the perfect plan actually. To my surprise there’s even a spur road (gated) that led up from the parking area, so there’s not going to have much off-trail bushwhacking. Clair decided at the very last minute to come along even though she wasn’t very keen on dumpster-diving. We literally had nothing else to do anyway.
I easily led us dashing up the decommissioned FSR and once making sense, we left the road for the quick ascent up the north facing slopes to the summit. There were a few scrambling moves required. The summit actually offered some neat views and we even discovered a register that hadn’t been signed too often. We spent more than half an hour on the summit mostly to kill time and then descended to check out the road situation again. This time we had to spend 10 minutes in the queue and the road was still closed, so we decided to go down to Idaho Springs and make a decision from there. Loveland Pass was in the vicinity so we drove up there for some tourism stuffs, and then we drove to Silverthrone to check into the hotel. Later in the evening we opted to give Mt. Blue Sky a final try and 3rd time was the charm. A drive-up ascent at sunset turned out to be a very memorable experience.
