Mount Wilson (Colorado)

Summit in Colorado, United States

Mount Wilson is the highest summit of the San Miguel Mountains range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The prominent 14252 feet (4344 m) fourteener is located in the Lizard Head Wilderness of San Juan National Forest, north by east (bearing 12°) of the Town of Rico in Dolores County, Colorado, United States.

Mount Wilson is ranked among the top ten hardest of the Colorado fourteeners to climb. The Mount Wilson region became the site of intense mining activity, particularly for silver, in the early 1880s. The most famous of these mines was the Silver Pick Mine, which gave its name to Silver Pick Basin, just north of Navajo Basin.

Mount Wilson contains four small glaciers on its summit, these being the southernmost modern glaciers in the Rocky Mountains and indeed the most southerly in the contiguous US outside the Sierra Nevada in California. These descend to None of the glaciers have ever been named, and it has never been investigated whether they are presently active. At least nine rock glaciers, composed of alpine permafrost, exist on the northern slope of the mountain, extending down to around 10000 feet (3048 m), although the lower limit of permafrost is more typically around 11500 feet (3505 m). During the Pleistocene glaciers were much more extensive than today, covering the whole summit plateau In glaciations previous to the Wisconsinian, it is generally thought that summit ice caps were even more extensive and joined to form the "San Miguel Glacier" with icecaps in the San Juan Mountains.