There are five fourteeners you can get to from Lake City (four of which are reasonable for any age), which is more than almost any town in Colorado can say. Redcloud sits about seven miles southwest of us at 14,034 feet and Sunshine is another mile south of it at 14,001. You can bag both in about 11.4 miles. They are joined by a ridge about a mile and a half long. So you climb the first one, walk the ridge, and the second summit is just sitting there waiting for you. Two fourteeners in one outing. That is the whole appeal and it is a good one. Redcloud got its name in 1906 — before that it was just Red Mountain, because the rock genuinely is rust red, full of iron, and on the right morning the whole peak looks like it is glowing.
Sunshine has the better story though. For most of my life it has been famous as the lowest fourteener in Colorado, number 53 out of 53, hanging on to the club by exactly one foot. It also barely clears the other requirement — a peak has to rise 300 feet above the saddle connecting it to its neighbor to count as its own mountain, and Sunshine rises 501. So for years there was this low hum of anxiety around it. Every time somebody talked about remeasuring the fourteeners with better equipment, the assumption was that poor Sunshine was going to get demoted and Colorado would quietly go down to 52. It did not help that nobody could even agree what to call it — it was Niagara Peak for a while, then Sherman Mountain, and the survey crews that came through in 1874 could not figure out where either name came from so they threw both out and went with Sunshine.
Then in 2024 they actually did remeasure it. NOAA came out with modern gear and Sunshine came back at 14,004.5 feet. Not only did it keep its spot, it moved UP the list. Our little embarrassment of a fourteener got a promotion.
Getting there is most of the commitment. From town go south on Hwy 149 about two miles and take a right onto County Road 30, the road toward Lake San Cristobal and Cinnamon Pass. You will be on pavement for the first four miles or so along the lake — the same water we have sent you to fish and swim in — and then it turns to dirt and stays that way. Stay right at the fork around mile twelve to get on the Alpine Loop. Somewhere around mile thirteen the road turns into a shelf cut into the south side of Sunshine Peak, which is exactly as narrow as that sounds. All told it is about eighteen miles from Lake City to the Silver Creek – Grizzly Gulch Trailhead and you should budget an hour to drive it. In dry conditions a high clearance two wheel drive will usually make it. I would take four wheel drive. There is a real parking lot up there and a vault toilet, and on a July Saturday that lot is full before sunrise.
The trail itself is Class 2 the whole way, which means it is hiking with some steep loose sections and no climbing. From the trailhead at 10,400 feet you head northeast up through the trees, pop out of the forest around 11,100, and follow Silver Creek up the drainage. Near 12,000 the world opens up. The trail curves right into the basin under Redcloud and switchbacks up to a saddle at about 13,000 feet, and from there you take the northeast ridge to the top. Then it is down and along the ridge to Sunshine, and then — and this is the part people try to talk themselves out of — back up and over Redcloud again to go home. There is what looks like a perfectly reasonable shortcut down from the saddle between the two peaks. It is not. It is steep and loose and full of ugly talus and the people who maintain this trail specifically ask you not to use it. Eat a sandwich on top of Redcloud the second time and enjoy the view twice. I told the boys they could count this as three fourteeners (fuzzy math).
The other reason to stay on the trail is the butterfly, and this is a genuinely remarkable thing about our county that most visitors never hear. The Uncompahgre fritillary has the smallest range of any butterfly in North America. It was discovered in 1978 on Uncompahgre Peak, right here in Hinsdale County, it lives above 13,200 feet on cool damp slopes, and it depends entirely on patches of snow willow — a tiny ground-hugging shrub — to feed its caterpillars. It went on the endangered list in 1991 when there were two known colonies left in the world. There are eleven now. Some of them are on Redcloud. That is why the Silver Creek route is the recommended one and why the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative and the BLM keep putting timber steps and boardwalk and tundra beds into that trail. It is not a rule made up to inconvenience you. Cutting a switchback up there costs something that took ten thousand years to grow and that exists in one small handful of places on the planet. We saw some orange flags up this season which makes me think they were surveying them.
The safety piece is short and it is the same for every high peak around here. July/August is our monsoon and the storms build fast in the afternoon, so the rule is be off the summits by noon. That means leaving Lake City at first light, five or six in the morning, which means you are driving that shelf road in the dawn light, which means you should be careful. There is no cell service on the Alpine Loop at all, so tell somebody your plan and fill up on gas in town before you go. Bring more water than you think and a rain shell you can actually get to. July through September is the reliable window — there can still be snow up high well into June, and by late September you will find it again above 13,000 feet. Personally, I love to get out there in June and October also but you need to check conditions.
My kids can handle this but I would strongly suggest you start with Handies. I will post that one soon. It is a MUCH shorter hike. If your kids survive that one, Redcloud (and maybe Sunshine) are a good next round. You can actually hike Handies from the same parking lot but most opt to start at American Basin.
Also… the lake is right there on the drive home. After 11 miles and 4,700 feet, a cold plunge in Lake San Cristobal is medicine.
