I'm intrigued by the Weminuche high pass loop. We're probably going to do a Weminuche trip next July, and I had assumed we'd do the Elk Park/Needleton loop with train (perhaps with a few add-ons to Highland Mary Lakes and/or West Ute/Twin/Rock Lakes). I just searched the high pass loop - is this what you did? https://thetrek.co/the-weminuche-high-route/ If so, it seems like it's beyond our ability. I'd love to learn more about your trip!
There's not really a single "high pass loop" there, but rather a bunch of different high basins all clustered together with various passes connecting the different basins (I hate names like "THE Weminuche high route"... uggh) Most of the basins have a faint use trail that departs from the popular trails (such as the ones on the Elk Park/Needleton Loop) and make their way up the basins. Some of these use trails are much more clear than others; some are hard to follow and you're basically off-trail. Most of that hiking is fairly steep too, and downed trees can be annoying. But that's really not harder than what you'd expect for off-trail travel in the mountains. The hardest part is the passes themselves, as most of them are pretty steep and with annoying scree (although they're pretty short for the most part). For the most part, those passes don't exactly require Class 3 scrambling or anything; you'll either be totally comfortable on that kind of terrain (on all the passes) or sketched out on all of them. I'm guessing fosanna didn't feel nervous for a second! (but I sure did!) Since a lot of those passes have similar difficulty level, you could always have a tentative plan of leaving the Elk-Park Needleton Loop to do a variation that incorporates some of those off-trail passes, and if the first pass is out of your comfort zone, you could just backtrack and continue the standard loop.
Thank you so much - I will be in touch!!!
We have zero experience with ice axes, so that kind of thing won't be in our plans. We'll see how things progress...
