Unit G05 (West Needles)

CPW's own harvest estimates put mountain goat success in unit G05 at 65% across all manners of take. A number like that comes from few tags and a short season, not from easy hunting. The plan: glass from across the basin, judge the climb honestly, and decide whether a hit animal could be recovered.

Glassing from Jones Mountain, Rio Grande Pyramid and Turret Peak

Take a position on one of Jones Mountain (13,812 ft), Rio Grande Pyramid (13,803 ft), Turret Peak (13,796 ft) and Jupiter Mountain (13,785 ft) and be on it before light. In the dark the air runs downhill. Pick an approach that doesn't send it into the country you want to see, and plan to move once the slope warms. Glass the edges first, then the shaded timber, then the edges again as the light goes. On the rut hunts, early hunts find goats higher and later hunts find them pushed down by snow.

Getting past the roads

There is little true four-wheel-drive road here, so distance from the gravel is the only thing separating you from the next hunter. One mapped public entry point falls inside the unit, so decide which one you take before the morning you take it.

The way in: U.S. 160 and U.S. 550

We have no road inventory for this unit, so the only routes we can name are the ones CPW draws the boundary with: U.S. 160 and U.S. 550. Those are its edges, not its interior — useful because they are where you leave the pavement, and useless for telling you what the inside is like. Check each of them on a current motor-vehicle-use map before you count on it, because a line on a boundary description is not a promise of public access.

A first plan from the pins on this page

The map above marks Mount Eolus, Windom Peak, Vestal Peak and Jones Mountain as places to see from, and Denver Pass, Trimble Pass, Stony Pass and Andrews Lake SWA as ground to watch. Each pin is a named feature verified to fall inside the unit line, not a spot anyone has hunted. Join two of them into a morning: be on the first before light, move to the second once the thermals turn.

What a day here costs you

814 square miles is more country than a week will cover, so pick one drainage and learn it rather than driving the unit. The ground is gentle enough that the pack-out is a distance problem rather than a climbing one. One good position held through the whole of first light beats three visited in a hurry.

What we can't tell you

Some of the ground named above carries no land-status flag we trust, so check ownership on a current layer before you hunt it.