El
Diente
Peak
Routed from OpenStreetMap · elevations USGS 3DEP
Telluride climber Dwight Lavender, then a teenager already known as an authority on San Juan mountaineering, led Chester Price and Forrest Greenfield up the peak's west ridge in 1930, believing they had made its first ascent. Lavender named it El Diente, Spanish for "the tooth," for its jagged profile. He later found, through research in a British mountaineering journal, that Englishman Percy Thomas had already reached the same summit in 1890 — while believing he was climbing neighboring Mount Wilson.
Lavender pieced together Thomas's mistake by checking his account against the terrain: Thomas described seeing Mount Wilson from Dutton Hot Springs, a sightline that doesn't exist, but one that does exist toward El Diente. Lavender went on to found the San Juan Mountaineers, a climbing club credited with more than fifty first ascents of Colorado and Wyoming peaks before his death from polio in 1934, at age twenty-three. El Diente's connecting ridge to Mount Wilson remains a serious Class 4/5 undertaking.
2WD: ~5 mi of dirt on Dunton Rd (FR 535) off CO 145 south of Lizard Head Pass (14ers.com mwil6/eldi4). Wilson Peak's route instead uses Rock of Ages TH (10,350 ft; OSM 37.8834,-108.0184) via Silver Pick Rd/FR 622/645 — good clearance needed for the Big Bear Creek crossing, usually passable by mid-July (14ers.com).
Lizard Head Wilderness, no fee or permit (GMUG/San Juan NF). Rock of Ages Trail #429 crosses former mining parcels on a rerouted public alignment — stay on the designated trail (fs.usda.gov Rock of Ages #429; 14ers.com silv0, checked 2026-07). Kilpacker side is straightforward 2WD.
Peak data: El Diente Peak — Wikipedia