Mount Antero aquamarine

A rough four-wheel-drive road climbs to 13,900 feet on this mountain, which is why the gem ground at the top is not the wilderness you are picturing.

Mount Antero is the highest summit of the southern Sawatch Range, a 14,269-foot fourteener in San Isabel National Forest about 12 miles southwest of Buena Vista in Chaffee County, Colorado. It is named for Chief Antero of the Uintah band of the Ute. It stands due south of the more visually prominent Mount Princeton and rises some 7,200 feet above Salida to the southeast.

It is prized for its gemstone deposits and holds one of the highest concentrations of aquamarine in the country. That is not a secret. The upper mountain carries many private mining claims, several actively worked with heavy equipment, and 14ers.com, which is the reference climbers actually use for these peaks, describes the result bluntly as a bit of a mess. The Baldwin Gulch road brings vehicles nearly to the top in summer, so the crowd up there is not only hikers.

Understand the claims before you swing a hammer. Active private claims mean the ground is owned and worked, and standing on public forest lower down does not make the workings above fair game.

There are two usual ways up on foot. The generally accepted hiking route starts on the east at the Browns Creek Trailhead and parallels Little Browns Creek to its upper reaches, where it crosses Forest Road 1A and follows the road near to the summit. The second begins near the ghost town of St. Elmo and takes the same forest road from the north, up Baldwin Creek. In fair summer weather that one carries heavy mining and tourist traffic.

People have been coming a long while. The Pike Expedition surveyed the peak in 1806, and a Forest Service sign at the Browns Creek trailhead commemorates the expedition camp at the eastern base. For a sense of what the very fit do up here, the five-time world mountain running champion Joseph Gray set a fastest known time in July 2018 of one hour, twenty-three minutes and ten seconds.