Hiking is a simple activity. A walk in the woods requiring nothing much more than strong legs and sturdy boots. It’s certainly less involved than cycling. Or is it? If you’ve browsed any of the hiking-related retailers like REI, Backcountry, etc. lately you’d think you couldn’t possibly survive a hike without carbon fiber hiking poles, high-end Italian hiking boots, the latest GPS watch and a complete water filtration and storage system. Which made me think of this. An oldie but goodie and if you live in Colorado (or Portland, I presume), probably more relatable than ever.
hiking
A Massive Day
Mt. Massive is the second highest mountain in Colorado, only 11 feet shorter than its neighbor across the valley, Mt. Elbert. It makes up for those 11 feet by being the mountain with the most area over 14,000 feet in the contiguous 48 states. With a summit and four sub-summits over 14,000 feet and a three-mile-long summit ridge Mt. Massive is truly massive. If you’ve been to Leadville, you’ve seen Mt. Massive and you may have mistaken it for a whole mountain range. Massive doesn’t so much dominate Leadville’s western skyline as it IS Leadville’s western skyline.
Continue readingHumble Humboldt
Most of our mountain climbing to this point has been in our local range, the Sawatch, or near Fairplay in the Mosquitoes. Looking for a change of scenery I wanted to try something in the Sangre de Cristos south of Salida. The problem is, most of the Sangre peaks are above my pay grade in terms of climbability.
Continue readingA 14er Two-fer
Deep in the heart of the central Sawatch range, about a third of the way between Buena Vista and Leadville, pretty much smack dab in the middle of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, lie the next two 14ers on my “to climb” list, Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford.
Continue readingWhich way to the Waterdogs?
The road less travelled
I generally like to start these mountain climbing posts with a picture of the subject mountain, just to give you, dear reader, an overview more or less, of what I’m talking about. I usually snap these pictures in the morning during the approach or after the climb on the way out, depending on where I can get the best shot of the entire mountain. For this post, a climb of Mt. Antero, the best photo I have was taken a couple of weeks ago when I was standing next door on Mt. Princeton. It’s a nice shot and I’m not too proud to recycle, so I present to you, once again, Mt. Antero.
Continue readingClub Huron
Next up on our 14er climb list was Huron Peak. At 14,003 feet Huron just makes the list of Colorado 14ers but what it lacks in altitude list-topping, it makes up for in remoteness and rugged beauty. Huron has the distinction of being the Sawatch 14er farthest from a paved road. What that means is that when you approach it from the lovely Lake Ann basin you are surrounded by nothing but wilderness for miles in every direction. No towns, highways or civilization of any kind are visible from Huron’s slopes. A perfect place for quiet seclusion.
Or so we thought.
Continue readingHidden Gem
Under the category of ‘it’s a small world’, the lady that we adopted one of our dogs from in Houston just so happens to also have a place near Salida. She and her husband split their time between Texas and Colorado and we’ve stayed in contact with them over the years since we met. They were in town last week and they invited us for a hike up by their place to participate in the time-honored CO tradition of viewing the changing aspens.
The objective for the day was a hike up the little-known (at least to me) Pass Creek trail to Pass Creek lake. It was an eight-mile round trip on a glorious fall day in the mountains.
Continue readingThe Realm of the Marmot King
Ok, so this happened last year but this is a new blog, I need content and this is as relevant as anything that passes as relevant here so consider it back story.