Hiking the Jones Group: Colorado’s Hidden 13ers in American Basin

Posted on August 23, 2025November 5, 2025 by jim

The Jones Group is a group of Colorado 13ers located by the American Basin section of the Alpine Loop.
We spent time in American Basin when we hiked Handies Peak and thought the area was absolutely gorgeous.
Back then I had no real interest in 13ers, we were just there to summit Handies and head back to our campsite outside Silverton, so the Jones Group went completely unnoticed until I was looking for training hikes and climbs in the area.
Jones Mountain is a Colorado Centennial peak (top 100) at number 78, and American Peak and Niagara Peak are both Bicentennials (top 200) at number 103 and 101 respectively.
Good training, plus a Centennial and two Bicentennials? Yes, please!
The most common route for the Jones Group is from the south side via the Cuba Gulch trailhead, but I saw a few trip reports from American Basin via the Patriot Couloir that caught my eye.
More elevation and less mileage than coming from Cuba Gulch (7.3 miles and 4,251 ft vs 10.7mi and 3,785 feet) means a steeper climb, but steep doesn’t scare me and I’d rather have the elevation gain than the mileage.
The road to American Basin from Lake City gets pretty horrible at the end, and especially the part going into the basin.
I saw a bunch of standard 4wd vehicles parked in the dark and thought I was at the trailhead since the route ahead looked like a hiking trail, but my GPS showed the trailhead .3 miles ahead of me.
Holy smokes, this is the rest of the road to the real trailhead. I see why people were parked down there…
It’s definitely very cool making your way up the trail to Handies Peak in the dark before veering off to cross above Sloan Lake to the couloir.
A million stars, and only a few headlamps ahead of me heading to Handies. I wouldn’t see signs of another human until descending back to the Handies trail at the end of the day.
The Patriot couloir is absolutely horrible, maybe the loosest crappiest rock, sand and dirt I’ve ever tried climbing up.
Three steps up, slide back two steps. Three steps up, slide back two steps.
On a steep slope with boulders below. Not fun.
I opted to take the rock on climbers left, Class 4 climbing with a few spots where I started to get into Class 5 and checked myself, backed down, and found a better option.
Horrible.
Then after that fun, I hit the saddle, bang a right and start hiking along the ridge.
Except American Peak was to the left…
Backtrack, summit American, turn around and regain the elevation I had already done towards Jones Mountain.
Jones is easy enough from here, Class 2 and 3 and only a few hundred feet of elevation from the saddle.
Then you look over at Niagara Peak and it just crushes your soul.
Looking down at the 800 or so feet of elevation that you have to drop and then regain in both directions made me second-guess whether I really needed Niagara today.
But momma didn’t raise no quitter – suck it up buttercup, the weather is good, there are plenty of calories and water in the backpack.
Thankfully there’s an option to descend without returning to the Patroit couloir, because downclimbing that mess would be more horrible than coming up it.
With my backtracking I logged 8.08 miles and 4,407 feet of elevation gain, very respectable numbers for a training climb.
Recommend? Absolutely not unless you’re a peakbagger.
Do Handies Peak instead, summit a 14ers on a trail that’s pretty much like walking on a sidewalk, and enjoy yourself thoroughly.