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 great-circle distance, straight-line distance from the northernmost part of Western Can ...

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

. The prominent

fourteener In the mountaineering parlance of the Western United States, a fourteener (also spelled 14er) is a mountain peak with an elevation of at least . The 96 fourteeners in the United States are all west of the Mississippi River. Colorado Co ...

is located in the Lizard Head Wilderness of

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, Montezum ...

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

Colorado Colorado is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States. It is one of the Mountain states, sharing the Four Corners region with Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It is also bordered by Wyoming to the north, Nebraska to the northeast, Kansas ...

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. Mount Wilson should not 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 A ...

. 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

s 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 or ice covered (e.g. ice climbing or mixed climbing) conditions. Its use depends on the terrain: in its si ...

and

crampon A crampon is a traction device 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 icefields, as ...

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.

Incidents

In 2010, experienced climber Peter Topp, was killed in a rockslide and lightning storm while traversing the Mount Wilson traverse to El Diente Peak with a small climbing party. Two other climbers were seriously injured in the accident. In July 2024, 21-year old hiker John James Coffee was fatally injured while traversing the ridge between Wilson Peak and El Diente Peak. Coffee fell over 800 feet to his death and was found after failing to return home from his hike.

Geology and history

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

tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

igneous Igneous rock ( ), or magmatic rock, is one of the three main rock types, the others being sedimentary and metamorphic. Igneous rocks are formed through the cooling and solidification of magma or lava. The magma can be derived from partial ...

intrusion In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

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

mining Mining is the Resource extraction, extraction of valuable geological materials and minerals from the surface of the Earth. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agriculture, agricultural processes, or feasib ...

activity, particularly for

silver Silver is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol Ag () and atomic number 47. A soft, whitish-gray, lustrous transition metal, it exhibits the highest electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and reflectivity of any metal. ...

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

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 The Sierra Nevada ( ) is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...

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 glacier Rock glaciers are distinctive geomorphological landforms that consist either of angular rock debris frozen in interstitial ice, former "true" glaciers overlain by a layer of talus, or something in between. Rock glaciers are normally found at hi ...

s, composed of alpine

permafrost Permafrost () is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below for two years or more; the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years. Whilst the shallowest permafrost has a vertical extent of below ...

, 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 ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

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

Climate

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