Mount Wilson is the highest summit of the San Miguel Mountains range of the

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

of North America. The prominent fourteener is located in the

Lizard Head Wilderness The Lizard Head Wilderness is a wilderness area in southwest Colorado. It contains and is jointly managed by the Uncompahgre and San Juan National Forests. It is southwest of the town of Telluride and is named for a prominent rock formation t ...

San Juan National Forest The San Juan National Forest is a U.S. National Forest covering over 1,878,846 acres (2,935.7 sq mi, or 7,603.42 km²) in western Colorado. The forest occupies land in Archuleta, Conejos, Dolores, Hinsdale, La Plata, Mineral, Montezu ...

, north by east ( bearing 12°) of the Town of Rico in

Dolores County Dolores County is a county located in the U.S. state of Colorado. As of the 2020 census, the population was 2,326. The county seat is Dove Creek. History It is thought that the area has been the site of human habitation since at least 2500 B ...

Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the wes ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. Mount Wilson should not to be confused with the lower Wilson Peak nearby. The peak was named for A.D. Wilson, a topographer with the

Hayden Survey Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden (September 7, 1829 – December 22, 1887) was an American geologist noted for his pioneering surveying expeditions of the Rocky Mountains in the late 19th century. He was also a physician who served with the Union Ar ...

. He was in the first ascent party, which climbed the peak on September 13, 1874, via the south ridge (a difficult route, not often climbed today).Walter R. Borneman and Lyndon J. Lampert, ''A Climbing Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners'' (3rd ed.), Pruett Publishing, 1994, , pp. 231–239.

Climbing

Mount Wilson is ranked among the top ten hardest of the Colorado fourteeners to climb.Louis W. Dawson, ''Dawson's Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners'', Vol. 2, Blue Clover Press, 1996, , pp. 160–165. The standard climbing route ascends the North Face from Navajo Basin. Some permanent snowfields exist high in the basin (sometimes termed "Navajo Glacier") and the climb usually involves snow travel, with

ice axe An ice axe is a multi-purpose hiking and climbing tool used by mountaineers in both the ascent and descent of routes that involve snow, ice, or frozen conditions. Its use depends on the terrain: in its simplest role it is used like a walking ...

and

crampon A crampon is a traction device that is attached to footwear to improve mobility on snow and ice during ice climbing. Besides ice climbing, crampons are also used for secure travel on snow and ice, such as crossing glaciers, snowfields and ice ...

s recommended. Scrambling on rock then leads to the summit. A popular, though long, outing for expert climbers is the mile-long ridge connecting Mount Wilson to El Diente Peak. The ridge is sharp and rocky, and requires difficult scrambling and often a small amount of

rappelling Abseiling ( ; ), also known as rappelling ( ; ), is the controlled descent of a steep slope, such as a rock face, by moving down a rope. When abseiling the person descending controls their own movement down the rope, in contrast to low ...

Geology and history

Mount Wilson, and the rest of the San Miguel Mountains, are made up of a large, irregular

tertiary Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago. The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...

igneous Igneous rock (derived from the Latin word ''ignis'' meaning fire), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rock is formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or ...

intrusion.Halka Chronic, ''Roadside Geology of Colorado'', Mountain Press, 1980, , p. 245. The Mount Wilson region became the site of intense

mining Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic ...

activity, particularly for

silver Silver is a chemical element with the symbol Ag (from the Latin ', derived from the Proto-Indo-European ''h₂erǵ'': "shiny" or "white") and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical ...

, in the early 1880s. The most famous of these mines was the Silver Pick Mine, which gave its name to Silver Pick Basin, just north of Navajo Basin.

Glaciers and permafrost

Mount Wilson contains four small

glacier A glacier (; ) is a persistent body of dense ice that is constantly moving under its own weight. A glacier forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. It acquires distinguishing features, such as ...

s on its summit, these being the southernmost modern glaciers in the Rocky Mountains and indeed the most southerly in the contiguous US outside the Sierra Nevada in California. These descend to . None of the glaciers have ever been named, and it has never been investigated whether they are presently active. At least nine rock glaciers, composed of alpine permafrost, exist on the northern slope of the mountain, extending down to around , although the lower limit of permafrost is more typically around . During the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

glaciers were much more extensive than today, covering the whole summit plateau In glaciations previous to the Wisconsinian, it is generally thought that summit ice caps were even more extensive and joined to form the "San Miguel Glacier" with icecaps in the

San Juan Mountains The San Juan Mountains is a high and rugged mountain range in the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. The area is highly mineralized (the Colorado Mineral Belt) and figured in the gold and silver mining industry ...

.Atwood and Mather; ''Physiography and quaternary geology of the San Juan Mountains''; p. 72

Historical names

* Glacier Mountain * Mount Wilson – 1906

Notes

References

External links

Mt. Wilson on 14ers.com

{{Colorado Fourteeners of Colorado Wilson San Juan Mountains (Colorado) Wilson San Juan National Forest Wilson