Brad, Tim and I set out in my manly minivan to a trailhead that didn't require 4 wheel drive to camp out the night before a more strenuous hike up Centennial 13er Mt. Hope and neighbor Quail Mountain. When we got there, Tim realized he forgot all of his sleeping gear. Fortunately, I brought enough extra gear including extra foam pads, extra pillow, and an extra sleeping bag, all of which I was intending to use for myself. So I shared these items with him, but it didn't really matter as sleeping in a tent is not usually very effective anyway.
We woke at 4:00 am as we knew weather was looking rainy. We hoped to beat the weather at least while we were above tree-line for safety. This trail from sheep gulch is relentlessly uphill. We moved at a steady pace conserving our energy knowing we had almost 5,000 feet of elevation gain today. We reached treelike just as the sun was rising with stunning views over neighboring 14ers Mt. Belford and Huron peak.
We reached Hope Pass and surveyed the route up Mt. Hope. Route descriptions I had read made it sound like most of the route up was on tundra until the top where there was a bit of scrambling. This was inaccurate as the terrain was a mix of steep gravel and loose rock for a majority of the climb and slowed us down a bit. There were a few fun sections, but overall a tad unpleasant. The way down required a bit of route finding, and we had to backtrack a couple times before getting into steeper sections. In general, staying closer to the ridge as much as possible is advisable.
La Plata Peak from the summit
Mt. Elbert
Twin Lakes
Once back down to the saddle, we felt good and the weather was cooperating nicely so we had a good workout up the steep trail to Quail mountain. There are some cool mining ruins up there. While we sat eating second breakfast, a few ptarmigan started harassing us for no apparent reason. maybe they had some little ones nearby where we were sitting? They are some beautiful but loud little boogers!
Ruins with Missouri Mountain (center) Belford (left of center) and Harvard (far left)
Fighting over who gets the hiking polls on the way down
This one was overal a great choice for a day hike. Though the forecast called for possible rain before noon, we were dry the entire time. As soon as we got in the car just after noon, it started raining. Perfect! K's Dariy Delight is now our go to burger stand in Buena vista right on the main road on our way home.
A group of preachers from our church plus James wanted to do a climb of 14er Huron Peak this summer. I had climbed Huron twice before and wanted to do an alternate (Lulu gulch) route that included three 13ers as well as Huron. I assumed the guys would be cool with me just hiking alone and then meeting them on the Huron summit, but turns out most of them wanted to just do all 4 with me. Then, when we found that only one of them just wanted to do Huron and not the other peaks, we changed plans and decided to hike most of the trip together. This way, I could split off and do Browns and UN 13,471 while the rest summited Huron. That ended up being a better choice because we got to have some good bonding time during the hike debating denominational issues and telling dad jokes.
Markos has a cool rooftop tent setup that we used. It says it's for 5 people, but the 4 of us were pretty packed in there. Usually the number of people a tent says it can sleep is a generous number and you should subtract one or two if you want to be comfortable.
About as close as four straight men can get
We started at sunrise the next morning and made good time up the switchbacks. Once we reached what looked like a good branching point I left the trail and headed up the talus slope toward Browns. The terrain was not as steep as it looked and the hike was fairly pleasant. It was quick work to the unnamed peak from Browns and back. Then I descended back to a pond that we said we would meet at thinking the guys would be down there waiting on me. Turns out they took their sweet time on the Huron summit and I actually waited for an hour and a half for them to return. Were we able to communicate somehow, I might have just climbed up to meet them on Huron's summit. Oh well. It's always nice to get a few hours of solitude in the mountains.
Those 3 Apostles are so picturesque!
Huron and pond
Heading up to Browns
Missouri Mountain I believe
Looking over at Huron from the saddle
La Plata Peak at center
Huron form UN 13,471
That feeling when you get back to the parking lot...
Late June we had the opportunity to tag along on a Colorado River rafting trip with a couple other families in the McInnis Canyon area. We started out of Fruita, CO and traveled all the way across the boarder into Utah. It was a fun time in some beautiful country. The weather was very warm, but nothing that water can't fix! We stayed at two different campsites two different nights and went on a few hikes along the way.
Brad and I originally planned to do a backpack into the Weminuche this past week, but there were forecasts of heavy rains so we called and audible and instead headed down to Willow Lake in the Sangre de Cristo mountains for a shorter hike that would take less time. Mt. Adams was on both of our lists, and was highly recommended by other hikers. We started on the trail completely engulfed by mosquitos. Wow. I'd never experienced such thick clouds of these vampires. They were so numerous that we would accidentally inhale them and gag every so often. It made for a miserable 5 miles and 3000ft. of elevation gain to the lake. Relieved to arrive at the lake, we looked around to enjoy the majestic mountain scenery. Only...wait...none of this looks like Willow Lake. Where was the massive waterfall and the views of Kit Carson Peak? Another hiker noticed that we looked confused and told us that we were 5 miles in the wrong direction! This was actually South Crestone Lake, not Willow Lake.
Bighorn Sheep
Brad's Karate Mobile
"This doesn't look right."
We had a good laugh (either that or cry) and sat down to think bout our options and look at a map. We figured out that we were looking up at Unnamed 13,159 to the east and Unnamed 13,552 to the south. Both of these were connected to Adams via their ridge so we decided to try and create our own route from here and see if the terrain would let us summit Mt. Adams. We did some scouting of the route that evening to see if we could gain the ridge of UN13,159. Once we realized we could do that, we had high hopes that we'd have a good shot to summit Adams the next morning. We built a campfire and enjoyed a mosquito-less night once the temperatures dropped.
Sunset over UN 13,552
The next morning we trailblazer our way to the top of UN13,159. It was another beautiful sunrise in the Sangre de Cristos. It's always a special experience to hike in places where you know very few others have traveled and experience the solitude. From the top of our first 13er, we looked at the route up Mt. Adams and had some serious doubts weather or not we'd be able to summit from here. The slope turned out to be much more doable that it looked from a distance. Once we reached the saddle, it was over 1000 ft. of type 2 fun climbing on steep loose talus. At the top was the summit blocks that we weren't sure we'd be able to safely climb, but hoped that the ridge would offer some doable options on the back side. Our hopes came true at the top and we had some quick fun scrambling to reach the summit. Brad and I agreed that Mt. Adams must be one of the best summit views in this mountain range. You could see a clear angle on all 5 of the Crestone 14er group.
