Originally written 10/1/06

Yesterday, I hiked up Mt. Elbert (14,433). It just happens to be the highest point in Colorado, and the second highest in the continental US (Mt. Whitney, in California, is 64′ higher).

According to guidebooks, the trip is 9 miles round trip, and comes with 4,700′ of elevation gain.

I’d been planning on going to the Great American Beer Festival on Friday night, which would have cancelled this trip, but I got blown off and decided to go enjoy what may have been the last non-winter conditions weekend of the year. We got a bunch of snow last weekend, but a warm week melted off a bunch of it, making for great conditions. The air was damn-near still up until the last couple hundred vertical feet, where it was a gentle breeze. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so I did get a bit of a sunburn.

Here’s a view of the mountain from a couple miles down the road (took it on the way out):

Now, 4,700′ over 4.5 miles each way isn’t all that bad. A decent slope for sure, but not too bad. The thing is, at least according to my GPS, I only gained about 500′ during the two mile walk to treeline. That left almost 4000′ in 2.5 miles. That’s pretty damn steep. These pictures are representative of the average slope up:

Heading up was tiring, but the number of false summits was mentally exhausting. Three or four times, I would look up, see what I thought was the top, but eventually see a point rise up over the crest of where I was going. Sigh. I finally reached a point that looked familiar from the research I’d done on the hike:

That’s the final summit ridge. Seeing that definitely raised my spirits.

View from the summit:
La Plata Peak:

Mt. Massive – if you truncated the mountain at 14,000′, the resulting plateau would be over half a square mile. It’s got more area over 14,000′ than anywhere else in the lower 48:

More mountains:

And of course my awesome dog:

And me:

The trail after treeline took me two hours to go up. I went down that same section in 45 minutes by running/plunge-stepping down through the snow fields. Damn that’s fun.

No idea what will be next, or when. Heavy storms could delay things indefinately, or we might have nice warm weather for a few more weeks, allowing for a few more easy hikes before I have to break out the snowshoes.

Originally written 9/16/06

Mt. Democrat, 14,148′

I woke up at 4am this morning to go get up some mountains. Although I planned on climbing Democrat, Lincoln, and Bross (all 14ers), the conditions were a bit much. I checked the forecast and it called for 60mph wind gusts at 12,000, plus a decent amount of snow.

Got there about 7:30, threw on my boots, made sure I had everything ready, etc. I noted that the outside temp was 31, around 12,000′. Scout got impatient while I was doing this.

It was cold and windy, and the terrain was killing my speed enough as it was (4-6″ loose rocks, slick with a layer of wet snow on top), so I didn’t take any more pictures until I reached the summit. Sorry. It was pretty dark gray, with sustained winds at a mere 15-20mph.

I passed a huge group of people on the way up, no idea what sort of group it was but I’m guessing they’d planned this well in advance, otherwise they probably wouldn’t have voluntarily come out in the storm that was going on. Higher up, there was a good 6″ of snow covering everything, getting deeper (and wiping out footprints in a matter of minutes) constantly.

It started getting really windy up top, gusts that were 60mph easily. Here’s Scout not being too happy about the weather:

Like I said, I’d planned on hitting the adjacent 14ers. I would’ve been able to handle them, as I had the proper clothing to completely seal up against the elements (including facemask). Unfortunately, my dog wasn’t having fun anymore, and I have no intention of dragging her along when she’s already miserable. At least I’ve learned that in the future, if conditions are going to be bad, I’ve got to leave her home. I love having her along, but I also want her to have fun when we go.

After a long, slow slog through the wind and snow, we made it up to the top. The clouds opened up a bit right when I got there, making for some impressive views.

Picture of us with the summit in the background (on the way down). Notice the ice in her whiskers:

Here’s a picture of the lake for which the trailhead is named, Kite Lake:

The view from a little farther down showed that I was right to head down. Judging by the intensity of the snow blowing around, winds were at least 30mph sustained. My dog would have been hating every second.

Next week…something. What exactly, I’m not sure. Mt. Elbert maybe. Hopefully there won’t be near-whiteout conditions, and it’ll be a little more fun with a better view of the changing aspens.

Originally written 9/10/06

Mt. Sherman, 14,036′
Round trip distance: 5 miles
Elevation gained: 2,000′

Some of you will notice right off the bat that this looks to be about 1/3 the trip I did last week. That would be correct. I planned to hike Mt. Elbert (highest in the state) yesterday, but it was decided late on Friday that I had to work Saturday morning. I woke up this morning about 6:45 and had a hankering to go hiking, so I rolled out of bed, threw together my gear, and was out the door by 7:45. Such a late start means I would have to do something a little shorter than my usual craziness; fortunately, something short and easy is exactly what I was in the mood for today, with a nice scenic drive in and out.

At 9:55 I rolled up to the end of the road, where this locked gate stands, keeping vehicles but not people out of an old mining area. I was by far the last person to arrive, but definately not the last to leave. There was a group I passed about 45 minutes from the summit, and I passed them on the way down not far from where I passed them on the way up. I’m not sure how these people were going so very slowly.

The mountains have been getting dusted with snow since mid-week, and it was still going. Here’s a picture of Mt. Gemini, with the summit poking into the clouds:

After an hour or so, I was up to the saddle between Sheridan and Sherman. Here’s the view to the east:

And to the west:

The weather was changing literally by the minute. It rapidly cycled between heavy clouds overhead, to clouds coming down to where I was, and back to clear. I’ve seen weather move quickly (like on Quandary, from my report last new year’s eve), but never cycling so fast.

Here’s a look up to the ridge the route takes, with my dog wondering what was taking me so long.

This was the first time she’d been in any amount of snow. She walked through a small patch of snow in May and started going nuts, here she went ballistic for a good 30 minutes through the snow, running up and down continuously.

Here’s another picture of Gemini, showing how quickly the weather was changing:

A little higher up the summit ridge, there were a bunch of rocks with some cool snow patterns on them. Also, notice the gray skies again:

The route, heading up into the clouds:

Here’s Gemini, gray and snowy again:

Here’s my awesome dog Scout, sitting for some reason.

Abandoned mine buildings:

With a kid climbing around on them:

From here, I plunge-stepped down a steep scree field, which was a lot of fun. After that it was a quick walk down to the car, with a car to car time of 2 hours, 20 minutes. Real quick, just what I wanted today.

Originally written 9/3/06

Stats:
Time: 10 hours (within 3 minutes)
Distance: 14 miles
Total ascent: 6,621′

The weather in Colorado has been turning in the past few weeks, with snow showing up at higher altitudes. This weekend represented what may have been the last chance for the year to go have fun on Longs Peak, an amazing mountain with routes ranging from class 3 all the way up to 5.12.

Last year, I went twice in two weeks, and went up the standard route known as the “Keyhole” both times. This time, I went up the “Loft” route, and descended via the keyhole. I also ascended Mt. Meeker, at 13,911′ while I was at it.

I woke up at 10:50pm Friday evening, ate breakfast, walked my dog (who couldn’t come, since Longs is in Rocky Mountain National Park), and hit the road around midnight. The drive was fairly foggy, since there were some low-lying clouds. I was on the trail at 2am, and the first person to leave that night.

When I hit treeline, the sky was completely clear – not a single cloud in sight. The stars were amazing, although there was no moon. We’re at the first quarter, but the moon set just after midnight, so was of no use to me. I made my way to the trail junction at Chasm Lake, and ensured I wouldn’t see anyone else for several hours by heading away from the standard route (where it branches off to the left, for those viewing the gps track).

The walk in from there was truly amazing. I could make out the profiles of huge rock towers and walls all around me, and the only sound aside from my footsteps was that of streams and small waterfalls. I wish I could better describe it, but it’s something that truly must be experienced.

Things started getting rockier and steeper, and before I knew it, I was in the heart of the climb. Ideally, the loft route can be kept at class 3 difficulty. With the only available light being that from my headlamp, routefinding was dicey at best. Add my impatience to the mix, and you’ve got a great potential for getting off-route, and into more difficult terrain. I worked my way into some climbing that was at least some solid class 4. Better yet, I managed to get up to bases of not just one, but two waterfalls, and had to downclimb and work my way back around. A pain, yes, but still fun, so I didn’t mind much.

I finally topped out on the loft, and Meeker is a simple 10 minute walk with some very minor scrambling at the top. The summit is also very exposed, which made for some amazing views. Unfortunately, the sun hadn’t quite come up yet, so this is all I’ve got for you from there:

I would have loved to be there for sunrise, but I was starting to shiver and needed to keep moving. I walked back down to the loft, and the sun finally rose.

When it got light, the view over the plains was absolutely amazing. Those clouds I drove through 4-5 hours earlier were still there, down between 10-11k feet. Simply beautiful.

My next goal was Longs Peak, and I didn’t have any solid idea of the exact route to get there. As I got closer, it looked like I could just go straight up and over to Longs from the Loft, but I recalled what looked like a big gap along the way, and tried to reconcile this with the topo map on my gps. Here’s the view from the south, heading towards Longs.

It was hard to do, but I went around to the left, and dropped several hundred vertical feet to make my way around. It was steep but fairly stable, with gorgeous scenery. I finally got a view that made me glad I didn’t just try to go straight up:

A little farther and I was at the “homestretch,” and joined up to the keyhole route. Still, not a soul in sight. 6 hours on Longs Peak without spotting a single person is truly remarkable. I was over 14,000′ at this point, and made the last 250′ up steadily, expecting to see at least one group on the summit. Nope. Check the register, and I’m the first person there. I guess the clouds blanketing Denver made people assume the mountains would be under blizzard conditions. Not quite true:

About 15 minutes later, people started streaming onto the top, 7 or 8 in only a few minutes. I started descending, and passed another 10 or 15 people by the time I got back down to the trough. I didn’t take but a couple pictures on the descent, since last year I showed all of you plenty of pictures two weeks in a row. I did, however, get this cool picture of the trough, with clouds creeping back into the valleys:

Once I passed down through the keyhole, I was getting very warm, so I lost the shirt. At some point, I was hopping down rocks, and my tempo picked up steadily until I was at an all out run down the trail. Some old guy told me I was crazy as I blasted by. It was a lot of fun, and helped make the 6 mile slog go by more quickly.

Shortly before re-entering the woods, I caught up to the clouds. It was truly amazing, as they were hanging in one place with only a tiny amount of wavering.

It was a wall of clouds, and a few steps made a difference between clear, warm summer day and cool, cloudy fall day. I made my way back to the trailhead, signed out, and saw that I was the only person who summited and returned so far. The ranger asked me for some information about the mountain, and was surprised to hear that it was bone dry on the standard route; understandable, given how thick the clouds were.

I was pretty sore, so popped a couple ibuprofin, and headed down the mountain. I stopped at a liquor store I used to frequent when I lived in Boulder (Superior Liquors, for those familiar with the area), and picked up a 12er of New Belgium’s “Saison,” their fall harvest brew, for $11. It was a tough call because Sunshine was the same price. Later in the evening I had a couple, and I highly recommend that those of you who have the opportunity to try some do so.

My next adventure will depend on what the weather does, but there’s a good chance it’ll be up Mount Elbert, highest peak in the state.

Originally written 7/29/06

Some of you may remember last year’s report where I intended to climb Mt. Bierstadt, cross the sawtooth ridge, and go up Mt. Evans, but turned around after Bierstadt. Well, I finally did it, and I have no intention of ever going up there again.

I drug myself out of bed at 3am, ate, and was out the door just after 4. I got to the parking lot for the trail at 5:30, but apparently spent so much time screwing around and getting ready, I didn’t get on the trail until 6. It was a very nice morning, and this was the first thing I saw on trail.

I then got a nice shot of the ridge I’d be crossing before too long, backlit by the rising sun.

And what’s this behind me? Oooo…

No pictures on the way up to Bierstadt, because it’s boring and I’ve already been there twice. But from the top..

And my ultimate goal for the day, Mt. Evans.

But it wouldn’t be easy, especially since I had my dog along, and this is how I had to get there:

All in all, it wasn’t too bad. I had to pick up my dog and carry her short distances in a few places, but she handled most of it on her own. No pictures from en-route there because I was too concerned with moving and keeping my dog from falling to stop for pictures.

Towards the end of the route, you switch over to the west side of the ridge, so there was a good photo op there.

And the way out of this mess:

Looks fun…

A nice, loose, steep, highly exposed exit ramp. Outstanding. Well, we made it, and here’s the view back across what we covered:

A beautiful view from the Sawtooth:

While I was here, I figured I should go hop on Mt. Spalding, since it’s a high 13er and I didn’t want to have to come back for that, if I ever decided to start after the 13ers. It was also only about 20 minutes off my route. No pictures, since it was boring.

I finally hopped on the ridge over to Evans, and trudged along for an hour and a half, maybe two. It was long and tiring. And when I got there, I was blessed with this beautiful view:

Sigh.

Anyway, since the cool part of the day was the Sawtooth, I got a picture of me and the dog with the ridge behind us. Everyone was shocked that she made it across the Sawtooth ridge.

After about 10 minutes of heading back from that point, I was able to see just how far I had to go.

Sigh x 2.

Going down the valley that drops down just in front of me in the picture there is very steep, wet, loose, and all around crappy, but it’s the only real option. I’ll spare you the uglyness, and instead focus on the cool stuff.

After getting down that valley, I spent an hour or more bashing willows through a swamp. My shoes got soaked with swamp muck, and at times the willows were over my head, with no game trail to follow, so I just had to bash through while pulling my dog along.

Total Distance: Approx 12 miles
Difficulty: Mostly class 2 with a decent amount of class 3 and even a couple class 4 moves to try to get around some of those goddamned willows
Gross elevation gain: approx 1 mile
Car->Car time: 7h58m

Originally written 7/22/06

Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve made one of these. No, I haven’t been completely idle, just busy with work, and I haven’t done anything interesting enough for a thread. Plus, my camera sucks.

So, the story. Yesterday I had to be at work before 5am to make sure we were ready for a concrete pour. Sucked. Went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 5:30am today fully refreshed, so figured it’s a little late but what the hell, I might as well go climb something. My dog needed the exercise anyway, and I hadn’t been mountain climbing in a few weeks now. Got up, coffee, quick breakfast, get dressed, and go.

Got there around 7:45, used the can, and hit the trail.

The trailhead is at 11,240′. I had forgotten how cold high alpine valleys can be in the morning, even in July. The sun was making its way up at this point, with pretty spectacular views.

The sun crested up over the ridge not much later.

I was getting pretty damn warm at this point. Apparently fast hiking with a 30lb pack generates a lot of heat. I was wearing my new REI Mistral pants, which seem to be some pretty great 3-season pants. The thing is, the 3 seasons are fall/winter/spring. Way way way too warm for a summer day with calm winds.

I made my way up Torreys Peak (14,267′) first, sat down, and kicked back for a bit.

In my hand is a New Belgium Trippel, an excellent beer that weighs in at 7.8% ABV. I had two of them this day, roughly equivalent to four american light beers. I enjoyed the view as I drank my beers for a half hour or so.

For some reason, I was able to largely ignore this, which was almost directly behind me:

After a snack, I got up and meandered over to Grays Peak. Nice view from there too.

But then I looked up, and wasn’t too excited about what I saw.

The clouds were swirling and building very, very quickly, so I beat a hasty retreat.

Anyway, I rigged up a google earth file of my track, taken from my gps. I thought some people might appreciate it so [url=http://beanmj.googlepages.com/gtbeer.kmz]here[/url] it is. All my future HAI threads should have these tracks along with them. I’ve got one planned for the near future that should be pretty sweet to look at.

Yes, I’ve done these mountains before, and reported on them with a much more interesting route. Deal.

Dog:

Originally written 12/30/05

Today I attempted to climb Quandary Peak, 14,265′. During the summer, this is a piece of cake, little more than a 3 mile walk to the top. However, it isn’t summer right now. Far from it, the area got a dumping of fresh snow last night, which turned out to cause more trouble than I had expected. Windchill for the time I arrived was predicted to be right around -30F, and I don’t doubt for a second that it was.

According to my GPS, I had a total ascent of 1900′, in 3.0x miles. My highest point was 12,290′. Here’s the track:

I took this very very soon after getting out of the car:

As I was moving through the woods, I heard some elk calls. Never saw them, but still pretty cool, and far preferable to the mysterious meow I heard on west spanish peak.

A few minutes later, the sun came up over the hills:

The snow on the “trail” hadn’t been touched in a while – it showed no signs of anyone being through there, despite all the wind being blocked by trees, and lots of the snowfall caught by branches. Here’s starting to come out of it, and that thing that sort of resembles a trail is where I trudged through the snow:

While I was in the heavy woods, I was mostly able to stay on top of the snow with my snowshoes and poles. Every now and then I’d go in some but it wasn’t horrible. That all changed as soon as I got out of the woods, and into this:

Beautiful, yes, but with almost every step came sinking, anywhere from my knees to my waist – and that was while watching out for the really deep areas.

I started to get up higher, which means stronger winds but also generally less deep snow. Things were going well, until the gusts got stronger and lasted longer. Eventually, the gusts turned into the sustained winds. I looked up, and saw some very dark clouds moving in very quickly. The weather forecasted an opening of a few hours between storms – apparently it was wrong.

When this became all I could see, I knew the weather wasn’t going to let me on to the top of that mountain today. I turned around and literally started running down the mountain:

A short while later, I came across some prints I laid down maybe 15 minutes earlier. This is all that was left of 2-3′ deep digs in the snow:

A couple minutes later, I was tired, and the weather seemed to be letting up, so I stopped for a minute. I noticed a few birds hopping around these trees, wondering what the hell they were doing up there. When the storm caught up to me, about 30 birds took off out of those couple trees:

Well, in the time it took to take out my camera and get a picture, the storm caught up with me, as you can see. I watched these clouds to gauge the storm’s progress, and if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe how fast these came tearing across the valley:

I eventually got clear of the storm (dense enough trees), but as you can see in the track, I was at least 1/4 mile away on my descent as I was on the ascent. I took a much more direct route, that happened to have MUCH worse snow. Much of the time on the return trip, I was buried up to my chest. When I was about a 1/4 mi from the car, I took off my snowshoes, strapped them to my pack, and just charged through the snow as best I could. It sucked, it was exhausting, and my clothes filled with snow, but I got back, disappointed that I had to turn around when I was half way to the top.

Sorry I couldn’t provide any summit pictures, those’ll have to wait for summer. I’m still waiting for the weather to do Pikes Peak, with any luck it’ll be nice e
arly next week.

Originally written 10/08/05

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Today I went after Grays and Torreys Peaks. Hit the trailhead about 10:10am. The normal route up is basically a class 1 the entire way. I had planned on just doing that, although had the idea of taking the non-tourist way up in the back of my mind. That alternate route goes up kelso ridge, which is a big ridge connecting Torreys from a mountain called Kelso. Everything I read described it as a class 3 route.

Here’s the start of the ridge, at the bottom of the saddle between them:

Here’s a little bit up the ridge – a very little bit. If you look carefully in the middle, you can see a guy or two. There were 6 or 7 of them going up Kelso Ridge for a bachelor’s party thing.

They had NO idea what they were getting themselves into. For that matter, neither did I. However, they were going ridiculously slow – move for a minute, sit for 5. I wouldn’t be surprised if they need a helicopter rescue sometime tonight.

A while after I left them, I saw this:

As you may be able to tell, it’s a mountain goat. Fatigue/exhaustion and altitude, on their own, can both affect judgement and perception. Together, they are even worse. When I saw two white fuzzballs moving out of the corner of my eye, something popped into my head. “Oh my god, polar bears, they’re going to eat me.” Yep.

There was a lot of very loose, very steep, and very dangerous climbing. This went on for a couple miles. That was nothing though. This was waiting for me at the top:

That’s taken right after crossing it. You go on the left side, jamming your hands into cracks in the wall as hard as you can. If you don’t, there’s a couple hundred feet of air right underneath you. Clearly, it would have been safer to turn back, but that wasn’t really an option. About 10 minutes into the route, you’re essentially committed to going to the top, because you have a 20′ near-vertical wall to scale.

Very shortly after this, you’re at the top – 14,267′. It’s gorgeous from up there.

Of course, no time for much rest, it was 1:45 after I drank water, ate food, and otherwise caught my breath, and I still had another 14er to bag.

Fortunately, there’s only about 500′ of vertical drop and then you go back up, and I was up on Greys in about 45 minutes. The view was unbelievable.

Me with godawful hair on top of Greys, with Torreys in the background:

It had been a long, long hike and I was ready to go home. On the way down, I took this picture of the top 1/3-1/2 of the ridge I had gone up:

Whoever
said that was class 3 needs a kick in the head. It was a 4, with some possibly low-5 sections.

My knees hurt, again. I’m exhausted. Next week: maybe nothing, maybe Pikes Peak (26mi round trip, about a mile and a half vertical gain).