Mount Sneffels, Mountain summit in Ouray County, United States.
Mount Sneffels is a mountain summit in the San Juan Mountains rising to about 4,300 meters (14,150 feet). It features multiple climbing routes through varied terrain with steep cliffs and different conditions along the way.
Mount Sneffels appears under earlier names: Mount Blaine and Sneffels Peak, with the name Mount Sneffels recorded by 1906. The sources consulted document no ascent date, so the 1874 Hayden Survey climb often cited is unsupported. The mountain's name was taken from Snæfell in Iceland, the volcano and glacier Snæfellsjökull that Jules Verne used as the fictional entrance in A Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Mount Sneffels takes its name from Snæfell, the Icelandic volcano on the Snæfellsnes peninsula whose glacier cap, Snæfellsjökull, Jules Verne used as the fictional entrance to the earth's interior in A Journey to the Center of the Earth. A slope on the mountain's western flank resembles a volcanic crater, echoing that Icelandic namesake.
Reaching Mount Sneffels requires a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get to Yankee Boy Basin, the main starting point for summit attempts. The best time to climb is during summer months when conditions are most favorable.
From the Dallas Divide on State Highway 62, Mount Sneffels is among the most photographed mountains in Colorado. Since 2023 it has also been printed on Colorado driver licenses and ID cards.
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