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PT 13,100 A + PT 13,089 ("Ribbed Peak") — Woods Lake

Other climbers: Emily Sharpe — not yet · Shawn D Keil — 1 of 2 (PT 13,100 A)

At a glance — recommended day

11.36 mi · 4,726 ft gain · Class 3 · 2 peaks · ~3.5 h drive

Researched: 2026-07-23

NOAA weather link: Woods Lake area Weather

CalTopo research map: https://caltopo.com/m/A4NV4U1

Status in DB: both unclimbed. Two ranked 13ers ~1 mi apart at the head of the Woods Lake drainage in the Holy Cross Wilderness — the southern pair of the Gold Dust cluster, on their own trailhead (~1.5–2 h drive from the Fulford peaks). Climbed together in the recorded peakbagger ascent as a single Class 3 loop.

Overview map

Note: the recommended route was distilled from 8 recorded GPS tracks of real trips (peakbagger · Kyle's recordings) — all layered on the interactive CalTopo research map.


Peaks covered

Two unranked-name ranked 13ers on the ridge SE of the Gold Dust group. PT 13,089 — LoJ calls it "Ribbed Peak" — is the Class 3 crux; PT 13,100 A just north is a Class 2 walk-up. They're 0.98 mi apart and climbed together.

Peak Elev Class Prom CO rank peak_db
PT 13,100 A 13,071' 2 ~380' ~#591 711
PT 13,089 ("Ribbed Peak") 13,089' 3 ~640' ~#575 732

Both sit in the Holy Cross Wilderness, White River NF — no permits/fees; standard wilderness rules on the hike. Neither has a formal route description (soft-ranked, TR-only beta).


Getting there — Woods Lake (Eagle County)

Drive from Boulder: ~3.5h via Google Maps (origin: 1162 Peakview Circle) — I-70 W to Eagle (exit 147), then Brush Creek Rd → Sylvan Lake State ParkWoods Lake Rd to the Woods Lake TH.

Trailhead — Woods Lake ~39.42269,-106.63916, ~9,390' — head of the Woods Lake Rd (recorded pb start; OSM/CalTopo "Woods Lake TH").
Vehicle Dirt-road approach through Sylvan Lake; high-clearance helps on the upper Woods Lake Rd.

Route — Woods Lake to both summits (Class 3)

~11.4 mi · ~4,730 ft round trip — the recommended line is graph-optimized from the Woods Lake TH through the pooled recorded track + OSM trails: a loop up the drainage toward the lakes, then PT 13,100 A (Class 2), a ridge/basin traverse SE to PT 13,089 / "Ribbed Peak" (the Class 3 crux — blocky scrambling near the summit; take the harder read and carry a helmet), and back to the trailhead. No add-on peaks or out-and-back spurs — just the two objectives.

The Class 3 is short and confined to the Ribbed Peak summit block; the rest is Class 2 tundra and talus with no sustained exposure.


Gear & season

  • Best window: mid-July through September — the Woods Lake basin holds snow late; the access road opens late.
  • Gear: Class 2/3 — no rope in season, but helmet for the Ribbed Peak (PT 13,089) Class 3 crux. High-clearance helps on the Woods Lake Rd.
  • Terrain: above treeline for the upper half — early start, off the summits by the early-afternoon monsoon.
  • Cell: unreliable in the Woods Lake drainage — carry an InReach.

Other considerations

Why not combine with the Gold Dust group? These two share the Holy Cross Wilderness with Gold Dust / Pika / Finnegan, but sit on a separate trailhead (Woods Lake) ~1.5–2 h of driving from the Fulford peaks, with no recorded track linking the two zones — so they stand as their own day. They pair naturally into a car-camp weekend with the Gold Dust Group 2-day trip if you want all five in one outing.


Trip reports & GPX (all three sources)

Sources confirmed logged in: 14ers.com ("Basin"), listsofjohn.com ("letsgocu"), peakbagger.com ("Kyle Knutson"). Both peaks' libraries were swept across the three sources and deduped, plus the full OSM trail network — layered on the CalTopo map.

Sources checked: 14ers.com ✓ (logged in, "Basin") · listsofjohn.com ✓ (logged in, "letsgocu") · peakbagger.com ✓ (logged in, "Kyle Knutson")