Routt County High Point Trip Report

Mt. Zirkel (12,180 ft)

Date: August 24-25, 1996
Author: David Olson

We were rather late leaving metro Denver. I drove the I-70 route to Wolcott and then north. We arrived at the Slavonia trailhead at 8:30 pm, late twilight.

I in front and John behind with a flashlight set out on the trail. We found and took the right trail fork, going up Gold Creek. I paced off about one mile and then we started looking for a camp. When the trail forded Gold Creek we made a camp as best as we could.

In the morning we broke camp, took down the tents and hid the packs, then found a log across the stream and hiked on up past the lake, and way up to Red Dirt Pass. From the pass we hiked north onto a sharply defined plateau and then up to the summit of Mt. Zirkel, 12180 ft.

Thankfully the middle summit is clearly the HP - the north summit would have been hard to climb. We found no benchmark, just a drill-hole. We hiked the same route back. We again noted, in a certain high-altitude band, an abundance of mushrooms, almost all Fly Agaric - poisonous.