Chicago Basin in Colorado’s Weminuche Wilderness may be accessible early this year

Colorado’s Weminuche Wilderness spans over 488,000 acres in the state’s southwest corner, making it nearly twice the size of the next largest designated wilderness area within the state. It contains more acreage than Kings Canyon National Park and Sequioa National Parks, respectively, and has nearly double the acreage of Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park to its northeast.

The mighty San Juan Mountains slash through the Weminuche from northwest to southeast, their jagged peaks and steep drops creating some of the most majestic drainages the state has to offer. Chicago Basin, perhaps the most majestic of the bunch, is home to 14ers Windom Peak (14,089 feet), Mount Eolus (14,087 feet), Sunlight Peak (14,061 feet), and North Eolus (14,042 feet), while Vestal and Arrow Peaks – shown in the above photo – highlight the seminal Grenadier Range just to Chicago Basin’s north.

It’s a backpacker’s paradise, full stop. Whether you’re seeking seclusion, fly fishing, peakbagging, or simply trying to log as many trail miles as possible, it’s a destination that tops all the charts. There’s a reason why both the Colorado Trail and the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) each criss-cross this part of the state, after all.

Weminuche’s Chicago Basin, while popular relative to other basins within designated wilderness areas, is actually pretty damn difficult to get to. Perhaps the most direct and accessible route into it involves taking the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, for some two and a half hours north out of the town of Durango, Colorado to the Needleton stop, at which point you’ll head south for a bit under a mile to the Needle Creek trailhead to begin your 8+ mile trek towards the basin. So, at minimum, you’re looking at over 16 miles on the trail and two train rides, and that doesn’t even account for trying to summit any of the 14ers or Bicentennial Peaks the basin boasts.

There’s another wave of variables that goes into trying to plan a Chicago Basin trip besides the logistics once you get close to it.

Getting close to it, for one, is a tough go – getting to Durango to catch the train and begin your ‘close to it’ journey requires a drive of over 6 hours. So, even if you’re weather-watching and trying to get in there when the weather’s good, you’ve got a hell of a commute to get started.

Then, there’s the aforementioned weather. Colorado perennially looks forward to its monsoon season, a time that usually arrives in early July when the prevailing winds that dictate winter and spring weather from the north shift and more southerly, moist winds begin to flow northeast up from the Gulf of California. With those warm, moist new winds come thunderstorms and waves of rain that, the hope always is, will help quench the thirsty, arid highlands of western Colorado post-snowpack and keep fire conditions at bay.

Post-snowpack is the other vital variable here. The San Juans and their high elevations usually get pounded with snow all winter, with Wolf Creek Ski Area north of Pagosa Springs averaging some 430 inches of snowfall per year – the highest of any ski area in Colorado.

That trio of vital variables creates the following scenario, in more spelled out terms.

1. It gets a ton of snow, and therefore the snowpack usually stays thick through June.
2. Monsoon season typically begins in early July, meaning the window between there being no snow on trails and when the daily storms begin to ramp up is often only a matter of weeks, if not days.
3. If you’re trying to be spontaneous and actually get into Chicago Basin during the peak conditions of post-snowpack, pre-monsoon, it’s a 6 hour drive from the heart of the Front Range just to begin you’re multi-day trip.

It’s damn hard to thread that needle as an individual, let alone someone with family and job obligations. That’s what makes the current snow-water equivalent levels in that portion of the San Juans so interesting as we begin the month of June, as it may well open a larger window for peak-condition accessibility than in the average year.

As Shannon Mullane of the Colorado Sun noted late last week, a rare and large snowmelt had left the Upper Rio Grand Basin in southern Colorado with only 6% of its average annual snowpack as of May 30th, a number that had dipped to just 1% as of the end of June 2nd. That area sits just to the other side of the same Continental Divide that the CDT traverses from Chicago Basin, but gives a glimpse into just how oddly melted-out some of the San Juans are right now.

Just to the south of the Upper Rio Grande Basin sits the Upper San Juan area where Chicago Basin is located, and it, too, is firmly in the red on the bottom-end of its average annual snowpack. As you see on the map below, it checked in at just 22% of its usual amount as of the end of June 2nd.

In other words, the snow is receding at an incredibly rapid rate relative to the rest of Colorado right now, and it’s doing so while the expected (hoped for) monsoon season is still over a month away. While that will ultimately pose its own series of problems later in the summer if the rains are light and fire season ramps up quickly, that means that June 2024 may well end up being one of the better chances to get into the Weminuche and Chicago Basin than in most any other year.

If You Are Planning To Go…

• Know that if you enter Chicago Basin from the west along Needle Creek, dispersed camping is often sparse until you actually reach the basin some 6+ miles into your hike. There you’ll find numerous existing, dispersed sites, but keep in mind that no campfires are allowed within the large area around the Needle Creek drainage. That’s basically the area east of Columbine Pass, north of Ruby Lake and Mount Kennedy, and south of the Turret Needles and Eoulus, North Eoulus, and New York Basin. Fires are allowed in most other parts of the Weminuche, with some important local restrictions.
• For my money, the best map of the Weminuche Wilderness and Chicago Basin is National Geographic’s Trails Illustrated #140 (Weminuche Wilderness).
• Always, always keep fire restrictions in mind before heading into the wilderness, even if you don’t intend on having campfires at all on your trip. If it’s a tinderbox down there, fire season could kick up near you, and it’s always important to keep tabs on how dry it is where you’ll be heading. As for local fire restrictions themselves, keep tabs on Colorado Emergency Management’s interactive map, which provides county by county updates on conditions. Also bear in mind that US Forest Service may have restrictions on federal land that complicate the local/county guidelines.
• If you’re planning to take a ride to the Needleton stop on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, I’d suggest hitting them up and being booked in advance.
• Do your dead-level best to practice the seven Leave No Trace principles while in the backcountry for the good of us all.