Eagles View of the San Juan Mountains

San Juan Mountains is the largest (17,000 square miles) mountain range in Colorado. The mountains are very diverse, from having several hundred acres large flat summits table mountains or mesas, to very steep and rugged Needle Mountains and everything in between. They are also most rugged and inaccessible. The Range extends from the south of Montrose in southwest Colorado to Abiquiu/Chama River, bordering with Jemez Mountains in New Mexico, see the map on the left. It has fourteen...
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San Juan Mountains is the largest (17,000 square miles) mountain range in Colorado. The mountains are very diverse, from having several hundred acres large flat summits table mountains or mesas, to very steep and rugged Needle Mountains and everything in between. They are also most rugged and inaccessible. The Range extends from the south of Montrose in southwest Colorado to Abiquiu/Chama River, bordering with Jemez Mountains in New Mexico, see the map on the left. It has fourteen (fifteen) 14ers: Uncompahgre Peak 14,309', Mt. Wilson 14,246', El Diente Peak 14,159' (only 259' prominence), Mt. Sneffels 14,150', Mt. Eolus 14,083', Windom Peak 14,082', Sunlight Peak 14,059', Handies Peak 14,048', North Eolus 14,039' (only 189' prominence), Redcloud Peak 14,034', Wilson Peak 14,017', Wetterhorn Peak 14,015', San Luis Peak 14,014', and Sunshine Peak 14,001'. Recent measurements of Sunlight Spire revealed that it is the 15th San Juan non-ranked 14er with 14,000' and 215' prominence. The hardest to climb 14-ers are then Sunlight Spire (class 5.10), followed by Mount Wilson and Sunlight Peak, both class 4, by the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS) ranking. There are three San Juan Centennial 13ers harder to climb: Jagged Mountain 13,824' (class 5.1), Teakettle Mountain (class 5.3) and Dallas Peak (class 5.3). The most impressive is the number of 13ers - there are 314 peaks, that make 43% of the all 13ers in Colorado. For comparison with European Alps, that cover approximately 5 times more area (85k square miles), there are 226 (with prominence of 300' or more) peaks in San Juan Mountains and only 51 summits in Alps (with prominence of 100m or 328' or more) over 4 kilometers high (13,123').