Climbing the Trinity Traverse, Arrow Peak and Vestal Peak in Colorado's Weminuche Wilderness

We hiked into Vestal Basin from Molas Pass over Memorial Day weekend to climb some 13ers. What a weekend it turned into! The hike in from Molas Pass, which is just south of Silverton, Colorado, drops down to the Animas River and then begins climbing back up the other side of the river. It ended up being an eight-mile hike to where we set up camp for the weekend. The next morning we woke up early to climb the three Trinity Peaks along the Trinity Traverse. The hike up to West Trinity was mostly easy with occasional patches of snow. Once on the mountain itself, it was class 2 and easy class 3 scrambling over rocks. From West Trinity, it was mostly easy on similar terrain until the crux of Trinity Peak, a class 4 chimney. After summiting Trinity Peak, we descended a steep gully on the east side before beginning the most challenging part of the weekend, ascending up East Trinity's west couloir. This began as a 45-degree snow climb and turned into a class 4 scramble with a few short class 5 moves to reach the summit. We summited at sunset and descended the east ridge in the dark and then hiked all the way back down to camp through Vestal Basin. The next morning I woke up after a short sleep and climbed Arrow Peak via its standard route up the east gully. I stayed on rock the entire way up, which was class 3 and class 4 and descended on steep, but good snow. Then it was over to south slopes of Vestal Peak, a class 2 and 3 scramble up some of the loosest rock I've encountered in Colorado. In all my weekend totaled almost 40 miles and 16,000 feet of elevation gain.