Colorado, Colorado 13ers, Colorado Hikes, Colorado Summits

Colorado 13ers: Hagar Mountain

Diana

I skipped a hike. I don’t know how it happened, but I did. Back in early August 2021, Chelsea and I summitted 13er Hagar Mountain together. When I got home, I recorded it in my hike spreadsheet. I even started writing this post. But somehow, I never actually finished the write up or uploaded it to WordPress… a fact I didn’t realize until I was sorting through some photos last week.

So this is a little (okay, a lot) out of chronological order, but here we go… Hagar Mountain. Pronounced ‘hay-gar’ or ‘hay-gur’ I assume, but I actually have no idea.

Hagar Mountain is on the Continental Divide, just north of I-70. The parking area for this route is not marked as a trailhead; as you emerge from the Eisenhower Tunnel traveling westbound, there is a pullout/chain station that usually has a handful of semis in it. However, hiker parking is allowed in areas without “no parking” signs.

From here, the our hike began on a service road that eventually turns into the Divide Trail (not to be confused with the Continental Divide Trail). The Divide Trail meanders through a meadow, roughly paralleling Straight Creek. Numerous smaller streams were flowing across the trail, and we found ourselves dodging quite a bit of water.

Views from the Divide Trail
Water crossing

One of the creek crossings was dotted with little yellow flowers. Upon closer inspection, we realized they were monkey flowers. We’d actually had a conversation about monkey flowers on our previous hike, discussing how neat they are and that Chelsea had never seen one. We wondered if they grew in Colorado. Apparently, the answer is yes!

Monkey flowers!

A little while later, still on the topic of wildflowers, I mentioned I hadn’t seen one of my favorite alpine flowers yet this year: sky pilot. As we neared the summit of Hagar Mountain, sure enough, there were dozens of sky pilots growing amongst the rocks.

Sky Pilot

We also spotted a few Arctic gentians, which I’d never seen before. All in all, it was a successful hike in terms of wildflowers.

Arctic gentian
Alpine succulent
Lupine
Indian paintbrush

It was also a successful hike in terms of summitting Hagar Mountain. I’ve kind of gone on a tangent here, so let’s get back to the hiking part of the day. After a little less than a mile (1.6 km), the Divide Trail doubles back on itself. At this point, we continued roughly straight ahead on an unmaintained but visible trail toward the back of the Straight Creek drainage. Eventually we veered off this trail too, as it curved to the west. We continued north, climbing straight up a short but steep slope to the ridge. It was from here that we had our first view of Hagar Mountain.

Straight up to the ridge we go
Made it!
That’s Hagar Mountain right of center

From this point on, it was an off-trail navigation kind of hike. At times there was a vague path, and our route was fairly intuitive. Nonetheless, it was somewhat of a new experience for me. Up to this point, I hadn’t done a lot of off-trail hiking. As someone who was well-trained at a young age to always stay on the trail, it’s a weird feeling to just be walking across the tundra. I did my best to step on dirt and rocks when I could, but there were times where that wasn’t possible. I found myself wanting to apologize to all the plants that ended up beneath my feet.

Getting closer

Chelsea had chosen this particular peak for us because a small section near the summit is rated class 3… a first for both of us, if I recall correctly. Class 3 is scrambling requiring the use of hands and, in this case, there was a little bit of exposure as well. It was nice to be able to help each other with route-finding and spotting when necessary and, together, we navigated this short section to reach the summit!

(And then navigated our way back down it, which was more challenging than climbing up.)

The class 3 section… and the Hagar Mountain summit
Photo by Chelsea
Summit views
Photo by Chelsea
Chelsea climbing down the class 3 section
Feeling very accomplished after our class 3 navigation

Once off the rocky summit, it was then just a simple matter of retracing our steps back to the car. Mostly simple. Walking across an angled slope is difficult on the ankles, and dropping from the ridge back to the trail was very steep as well. But it was a fairly straight-forward journey.

The air quality wasn’t the best on this particular day, something that has, sadly, become fairly typical for Colorado in the summer. I seem to recall that it deteriorated quite substantially the next day, and I actually didn’t hike again for a couple weeks because of this. So I’m glad we were able to squeeze this one in without inhaling too much smoke.

I may never actually know how to pronounce it, but at least I can say I’ve climbed it. Hagar Mountain: check!

The Important Stuff

  • Getting there: the trailhead is located immediately west of the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70. When traveling westbound, pull off to the right as soon as you exit the tunnel. If traveling eastbound, take the exit just before the tunnel entrance which will take you around to the parking area on the westbound side of the road (Google maps calls it the MM 213 Westbound Chain Station)
  • Fees and passes: none
  • Hiking: this is a mostly off-trail hike that can be done as an out-and-back or as a loop hike to incorporate some of the adjacent peaks. We did the out-and-back version, approximately following the route shown here; for us it was 6 miles (9.6 km) with just over 2500 feet (765 m) of elevation gain
  • Where to stay: we did this as a day hike from Denver, but closer lodging (camping, hotels, etc.) can be found in Dillon, Silverthorne, Frisco, or Georgetown
  • Other: as is always the case on a hike like this, keep a close eye on the weather to avoid being caught out in the open (this entire hike is above tree line) in a thunderstorm

Published by Diana

Hiking, road-tripping, and handstanding my way around the US (currently) and the world (hopefully in the not-so-distant post-COVID future… if such a thing exists)

30 thoughts on “Colorado 13ers: Hagar Mountain”

  1. Nice! If you come up via Dry Gulch or via the Citadel, there’s a “knife-edge” section along the north-eastern summit block that’s pretty nice, 3+ I’d say with plenty of footholds, fun to mess around with, and plenty of bailout options if you need them.

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  3. What a lovely hike! A bit of class 3 is always fun 🙂 I know what you mean about off-trail hiking – we’ve apologized to so many flowers on our travels. I always feel bad when I have to walk over meadows and especially tundra. I remember seeing Arctic gentian when we visited RMNP 20 years ago (!) and though it doesn’t grow here, I’m always on the lookout for other gentians. Did you sniff the sky pilot? We have a type here that also goes by the name skunky Jacob’s ladder and it does indeed smell like skunk.

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  4. Even if it’s out of order, I really enjoyed hiking this green, wet (!), and wildflower-rich trail with you Diana. Everywhere I look right now, the vegetation is brown and desiccated. And there is no snow anywhere to be found along the Front Range. At least Hagar Mountain should be covered in white and hopefully get ready for another beautiful wildflower season.

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  6. I love that so many of your posts feature such beautiful alpine flowers. I’m surprised at the colour of the monkey flower and paintbrush. We have a version of monkey flower that is bright pink and I’ve only ever seen paintbrushes in shades of red, pink, coral.
    Merry Christmas and happy holidays, Diana!

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      1. We have yellow monkey flower here too but it’s much less common than its pink relative. We found a variety growing on some rocky cliffs in Vancouver last year, not 20 minutes from our apartment! I was so pleased to see it! That sulphur paintbrush is stunning – much more intense than the yellow paintbrush I’ve seen in BC.

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  7. I’m not very well-versed in identifying flora (i.e. I see a flower and think, “ooh, pretty flower!” and that’s the extent of it, haha), but it’s very admirable that you know what you’re looking at during the hike. That incline up at the very end gave me a bit of secondhand anxiety, but kudos for making it to the top! And it’s fortunate you still got to go up despite the iffy air quality!

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