July 2012 – Globitrotter

Downtown Denver

After a bit more than a week of hiking in the mountains we treated ourselves to a couple of nights in downtown Denver. Last year we also visited Denver but stayed a bit outside of town in a crappy motel. Then I promised myself that next time we come here we will stay in a nice hotel downtown. We both like this city very much, it has everything we were missing in Phoenix. It has a very nice city center with an abundance of restaurants, cafés and shops.

After some research I found a boutique hotel called the Magnolia just one block off the 16th Street pedestrian mall. The hotel is located in an old bank building built in 1910 and they have kept some of its old style. There is a free bus going up and down 16th Street so it is very easy to get to any restaurant or shop of your choice.

Everything we needed was included, breakfast and wifi. Parking was unfortunately additional like any other nice downtown hotel. There was a parking garage just next door which was better deal than using the hotel valet parking. A bonus though was the complimentary wine and beer in the early evening and the late evening milk and cookies (!).

The room was very spacious with a kitchen, living room and bedroom. The bedroom even had a walk-in closet. Basically it was probably bigger than my apartment in Stockholm…

We can warmly recommend this hotel which made our stay in Denver a very enjoyable one. We spent a couple of days just enjoying the hotel and the fact that we could walk to everything we needed.

10 14ers in 6 hiking days

It might sound better than it is. We actually did 10 peaks in 9 days of which 3 were resting days and 6 hiking days. That means we did 3 peaks one day, 2 peaks 2 days and 1 peak 3 days. It was our goal to do another 10 14ers this year, like we did last year. However, when we have read our guide book a bit more carefully we found a few peaks that just sound like fun so we decided to aim for another 8 peaks. That will bring us up to a total of 28 peaks and just about half of the 55 14ers in Colorado. I believe we will be content with that for now and have to come back for the rest of them another time.

We believe that we are making a pretty good job climbing these 14ers. Most people that we have talked to hike maybe one or two a year or so. But there are also those who are quite extreme. One guy we have read about did all 55 peaks in 10 days!! He trained for years and had a crew of 6 or so people supporting him during this time. He was also true to the 3000 feet rule which we have not been. This means that for one hike to count you have to climb at least 3000 feet for each peak. We have not done this since some peaks are close to each other and you do not have to loose that much altitude to reach the next peak. We are also willing to use our car in any way to make it easier. Our goal is just to reach all summits at some point. We will probably try and do the rest of the peaksduring a longer holiday in a few years.

So far this year we have hiked Mt Sneffels, Blanca, Ellingwood, Missouri, Oxford, Belford, Huron, Shavano, Tabeguache and Massive.

Mt Sneffels was the easy first peak. We could drive up to over 12000 feet which made it an easy hike.

Blanca and Ellingwood were hard because of the very long approach along a 4×4 road. But the peaks were nice and had some fun scrambling at the end. Also the last part of the hike was nice along a number of lakes.

Missouri, Oxford and Belford were 3 peaks in one day and this was a hard one because of the length and elevation gain. After Missouri we had to drop quite a lot in elevation before we could make it up towards Oxford. It was about as long as Blanca and Ellingwood but even more elevation gain.

The view from Mt Missouri as the sun is rising.

The ridge over to Mt Belford from Mt Oxford.

Mt Huron, which we did the day after, was like a rest day. Short and easy hike, beautiful grassy slopes and a nice view from the top. I would definately recommend this one for a first 14er.

The nice trail up Mt Huron.

Shavano and Tabeguache we climbed together. It was a fairly easy hike but also quite boring. A lot of it was in the forest that seemed endless. Shavano has a pretty cool peak and the hike along its ridge towards Tabeguache was fun. The drive up to the trail head was also very nice.

The sun is rising as we are hiking up Mt Shavano.

On Mt Shavano.

The view towards north from Mt Tabeguache.

Mt Massive was interesting. We chose to climb the south west slopes because we could drive to the trailhead with our car. This way is shorter but steeper than the standard way. This particular day we were happy to have chosen this way because of the traffic on the standard trail. As we reach the top there was a group of about 10 there which left a few minutes after we got there. From the top we could see the standard route and the amount of people coming up. After a little while a teenager reaches the top and says he is the first of a group of about 50 (!) coming up. This was the time to leave and head back down before the rain clouds came in. Mt Massive is the second highest 14er and very close to Leadville which is a popular place to stay. It was obvious how much more popular this peak is although there are so many other peaks in the area.

On our 20th peak, Mt Massive.

Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point – long and exhausting

Our second 14er attempt was to climb Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point. These two are just next to each other and therefore easy to do in one day. The problem here is that it is a very long hike to get to the peaks at all. There is a 4×4 road but unfortunately the hardest in Colorado and should only be attempted with heavily modified vehicles. We were able to get up to about 8800 feet with our FJ and therefore having another 5500 feet to climb and a 24 km round trip hike.

Since there are thunderstorms in the afternoon we had to start before 4 am to be sure to make it off the peaks before the clouds come in.

One of the lakes we passed as the sun is slowly rising.

At 9 am we were at the first peak. I was exhausted and was seriously thinking about skipping Ellingwood. But we had met a guy on the way up and we could see how he quite quickly made it over to Ellingwood. The sky was still blue and after some sandwiches and snacks I was happy again. It was not as bad as it looked to hike the ridge over to Ellingwood where we stayed for a little while. We saw some clouds building up and since we knew we had a long way back to the car it was time to leave. At 11 am we left the peak and made it back to the car just after 2 pm just before it started to rain. Good timing!

View from Blanca Peak and the ridge we came up.

Enjoying Ellingwood Point.

Great Sand Dunes

A bit unexpected The Great Sand Dunes National Park is found in Colorado. Since it is just next to Blanca Peak and Ellingwood Point which we were planning to climb we made a short stop and did some different type of hiking. Honestly I prefer hiking on rock rather than sand… But it does look pretty cool and it was nice with the views of the surrounding mountains.

Mt Sneffels – short and easy

After a couple of days driving through Nevada and Utah we finally reached Colorado. Here the plan is to hike some 14ers. We drove into one of our favourite places from our trip last year, Ouray. It is called the Switzerland of America, which could be discussed, but ok, close enough. We spent one lazy day in the village. It featured hot springs, beer, coffee/tea and chocolate. At this point we were fairly bored and were looking forward to go hiking.

As the sun rose the next day we headed off towards Mt Sneffels. It was a short hike and not even 3000 feet elevation gain because we were able to drive up to the trailhead with our 4×4. Some would claim this can not be counted as a 14ers since it was less than 3000 feet elevation gain. But we don’t care. We just like the view from the peak and are willing to use our car in any way we can to make it easier. If we were only doing one peak then maybe I would go by the “rules” but right now we have 12 peaks on our list to do in a week so I think we will be doing enough exercise.

We decided to climb Mt Sneffels on the 3rd class rated southwest ridge. This was a good decision since the standard trail was basically just scrambling up a stone field. We took this way down and it did not look like a lot of fun coming up. It took us only 20 min or so to reach the ridge. The climb was easy to find and lots of fun. There was some exposure occasionally which always makes it more interesting.

The view from the ridge as the sun is rising.

We reached the peak already 7.30 am and stayed there for about 2 hours. After 1.5 hours another guy joined us and after 2 hours the masses started to reach the top which meant it was time to leave. From the peak we could see people coming up and there were lots of them. After we left the top they were probably about 30 people up there. This is one reason to start very early, you get the peak for yourselves.

The view from the peak looking down the ridge we came up.

The weather was perfect, warm enough to hang around for a long time and sunny. As we reached the car again some clouds were coming in and we made it back to town just in time for lunch. 🙂

Cathedral Peak

One of our goals in Tuolumne was to climb the Cathedral Peak. It is rated a 5.6 which should be an easy climb for us. The theoretical number of pitches were 5-6.

Cathedral Peak as we are approaching. The climb is up the left ridge.

We got up before the sun and started the approach at dawn. It took us almost 1.5 hours to reach the base of the climb. It took us a few minutes to gear up and have a sip of water. The mosquitos were bad so we did not linger at the base.

I started leading the first pitch which featured a hand crack custom made for my size of hand. Andy did not like it as much. Second pitch Andy lead. Third pitch I ended up choosing the wrong way and made a belay station before I was supposed to due to the rope drag being heavy and the crack much more difficult than I thought. Andy had to come to the rescue. After this point we did shorter pitches than was described in the topo and ended up with 8 pitches instead of 5 or 6. It was a great climb that had some great spots like the hand crack, a chimney and some airy bits close to and on the peak.

Andy having a rest at one belay station.

Me in the chimney.

As always it took us a bit longer than it says in the guide books but we were the first ones on the cliff and the first ones on the top. There were a number of people coming up after us but we only saw them from above and did not actually meet anyone during our climb. We were surprised because it had said that this route is always full of people.

Andy on the peak.

It was a great feeling to sit on the top of Cathedral Peak. There is not a lot of space up there and we were happy we were the only ones. The view was spectacular and is always so much better if you actually made an effort to get there.

Me on one of the rocks forming the peak.

The view from the peak. If you look closely on the image you can see a guy on the top of the spire, the Eichhorn.

The down climb was described as a 4^th class (should be easy) and probably was if you found the exact right way. We found a tree and ended up rappelling down to save some time and energy. Once back at the Meadow we went to the store, bought some soda and chips and had a rest at the creek before we jumped in it. The creek is not colder than average summer water temperature in Sweden so it is ok.

Hiking back after a great climb.