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 (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’).
Atlas of San Juan Mountains, Eagle’s View of San Juan Mountains is available for the download in a highly compressed format (only 17 MB) or as a hardcopy. It is a 189 pages-long book. San Juans are divided into 6 areas, as shown in the first column of the table below. Each row in the table shows four images from each chapter.
NE |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
La Garita & Phoenix Peaks |
San Luis Peak |
Bristol Head |
Cannibal Plateau |
|
N |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Uncompahgre Peak |
Sunshine & Redcloud Pks |
Handies Peak |
Courthouse Mountain |
|
NW |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Mount Sneffels |
Mount Wilson |
Lizard Head |
Columbine Lake |
|
SW |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Ice Lake Basin |
Ice Lake |
West Needles |
Vermilion Peak |
|
S |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Grenadiers |
Mount Eolus |
Windom Peak |
Rio Grande Pyramid |
|
SE |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Saddle Mountain |
Wolf Creek Ski Area |
Mount Hope |
South Fork |
A wide panorama of San Juans ends this photo book: 
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