The weather has been extremely conducive to late-season hiking this year, with above average temperatures and a near-total lack of precipitation. With the weather on our side, Lauren and I continued on our quest to hike all of Colorado’s 14ers together yesterday morning with an ascent of Mt. Huron. After an early wake-up call at home, we pulled in to the parking lot shortly before 6:30, finding the 14ers.com “Gurlz Hike” about to get underway (though they were hiking La Plata Peak). The walk along the 4WD road to the trailhead was quick enough, and offered beautiful views of the surrounding peaks under an early-morning alpenglow.

The walk to the trailhead-proper is only two miles and covers only about 300′ of elevation, so it flew by with a couple opportunities for photos.

The smooth trail switchbacks through the woods for a while.

Scout, as always, loves hiking. There is only one problem – after only a couple decent hikes over a couple weeks, she can no longer be tired out in this way.

Taking her out on long day hikes used to be a good way to wear her out and calm her down, this day she was running circles around us even towards the end of the hike.

After these past couple weeks, I’m positive she’s ready for ski season, and will be joining us regularly in the backcountry. You may notice I’m not talking a lot about the hike here; there’s only so many times I can say “it’s beautiful” and “the trail is smooth and easy.”

I highly recommend this hike to anyone looking for a fairly easy, scenic 14er. Looking around back here has me wanting to come back in the spring, set up a base camp, and ski a few 14ers in the area.

There was a decent number of people on the mountain yesterday, but not nearly as crowded as the front range 14ers get.

And here’s a view to the south, of the Three Apostles.

And a shot of Lauren hiking up. We talked a little about photography, and how the light right around sunrise and sunset (i.e. “the golden hour”) is so much better than flat, mid-day light, but how a good cover of snow can mitigate a lot of that.

Scout was rather well-behaved, as has tended to be the case lately. She’s also been standing still for photos.

Huron is one of the lower 14ers, at 14,003. This means that there was very little ground above the tundra line, resulting in a rather good trail the entire way. Almost there..

We topped out about 10:30, finding a small handful of people on the summit.

This was our 7th (of 58) 14er summit together, Lauren’s 10th, and my 20th. We hung out on top for about 15 minutes before heading down.

Lauren has gotten much stronger lately, and with the smooth trails, decided to try her hand at a little trail running.

We ended up running most of the way down to the trailhead, which was lots of fun. Lauren picked up a couple blisters, and has decided she needs trail runners for light hiking like this. Another convert!

It was a great hike right up to the very end. Less than a minute away from the car, three unleashed dogs came running up (completely out of voice control from their owner, some woman who kept passively calling the dogs to come to her), and one flipped out and attacked Scout. After a couple unsuccessful attempts to break them up, I saw that the other dog had Scout by the neck, and I immediately shoulder-tackled the other dog by the neck. It’s disappointing that some people are such terrible dog owners, but that won’t keep me out of the mountains.