West Spanish Peak - May, 2018

Spanish Peaks at sunrise - Prints available

For years, my brother and I have been hiking (or attempting to hike) West Spanish Peak from the wrong trailhead.  I was 17 years old when we first attempted to summit this mountain.  We were camping out at my parent's lot down in the area and decided it would be fun to climb to the top of the Spanish Peaks.  So, we just drove toward the mountains from I-25 until we found a good spot to hike.  Jason and I started at 4:00 in the afternoon with no food, jackets, flashlights, knowledge, or wisdom.  We just thought it would be cool.  The route we took was from the east side and the trail ended in a bowl a little above treeline.  From there, we cat crawled up steep, loose talus/scree trying to reach the ridge line until we were exhausted.  The clouds rolled in below us at sunset, and we knew we'd been defeated.  Walking back in the pitch dark without a light was an experience.  

We would later attempt this same route multiple times until we finally made the summit with our friend Dustin a couple years later.  Little did we know that there is a nice standard route to the summit from Cordova Pass.

Dustin, Jason and I in 2004

Fast forward 17 years and West Spanish Peak makes for a nice warm up for the summer hiking season.   The gain is less than 3000 feet, but is fairly steep and makes for a good workout.  It's been well over a year since I've been above 13k and it felt like it.  I remember how difficult and tiring mountain hiking is.  Though I've been working out and doing cardio at home, it doesn't fully prepare you for the altitude.

Meadow near the start of the route with West Spanish Peak

The Culebra Range

Large cairn near treeline

The Blanca group to the north.  These peaks are super dry for this time of year!

Some of the rock looks like Crestone Conglomerate

Only one false summit.

Summit View looking north.  You can see the magmatic dikes below.

East Spanish Peak

West Spanish Peak with the stars

Mountain Ranges with Peak Labeling

Peak labels

I've been taking some of my super wide panoramic photographs of different mountain ranges and adding text above the mountains that displays the peak names and elevations above sea level.  People look at these mountains every day, but don't always know what peaks they are looking at.  I thought it would be neat to have the labeling above the mountains in the images to clarify.




The first one, completed last year, has been one of the most popular images in my gallery.  The panorama is taken from Union Reservoir in Longmont and features almost the entirety of the northern Colorado Front Range from the Arapaho Peaks at the south end (left) to the Twin Sisters at the North end (right).  The photograph was taken at sunrise in the fall when all the trees have turned.  Longs is the tallest named peak at 14,259 ft. above sea level and the only 14er north of I-70.

Front Range detail

Front Range detail 2

The next one is from the Teton Range in Wyoming.  These peaks are super dramatic and shoot out from the ground with pointed spires.  No 14ers in this one, but the Grand Teton comes close at 13,770 ft.

Teton detail

Teton Range detail

The third print displays the Sneffels Range, one of the sub ranges within Colorado's huge San Juan Range.  These peaks are some of the most jagged in the state and can be seen from Montrose to the north.  The photograph was taken just outside the little town of Ridgway at sunset when the clouds turned soft pink and purple.

Sneffels detail

The difficult part of this process is trying to identify which mountain is which as viewed from the angle the photo was taken from.  One of the best tools I've found is a website called peakfinder.org. Here you can actually put yourself anywhere on a map and it will give you silhouette outlines and labels of the peaks as viewed from where you are positioned.

peakfinder.org

Interestingly, there are a few peaks in the Sneffels Range that are widely mislabeled in books, posters, and photographs.  Even the Ridgway State Park has a plaque up in the visitor center where unnamed 13er, otherwise called "S9", is incorrectly labeled as "Hayden Peak".  Though this is one of the most photographed mountains in Colorado, most people don't even know it's name and often refer to it as Mt. Sneffels.  I had to consult some of the experts on 14ers.com to clarify certain peak identifications.

Here's a link to oder prints of these and other mountain label panoramas

 https://aaronspong.com/collections/mountain+ranges+with+peak+labels