Red Peak

Dogs Leashed

Features Views · Wildflowers

There are hundreds of jaw-droppingly-spectacular peaks in the Gore Range, but most of them require miles of scrambling on semi-technical terrain to reach. Red Peak is one of the few exceptions. It's high, but getting there requires only a leg-burning run up a ridgeline to reach its pointy, view-ridden, 13,137' summit.

Start from the popular Red Buffalo Pass (which is itself probably the easiest ridgeline crossing in the Gores), which you in turn accessed from either the Gore Creek Trail from East Vail or the Buffalo Mountain Loop. There's no trail per se, but a tundra and talus ridgeline to follow up and up and up some more. You'll gain about 1100' in a mile to the western sub-summit. Then downclimb a little bit and follow the sharp ridge eastward to the summit of Red Peak. Voila! You've bagged a Gore summit!