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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.