On the final day of the avalanche course I took back in January 2023, armed with our newly acquired backcountry knowledge and excited to start exploring, me and my classmates spent a good half hour peppering our instructor Katie for suggestions on places to ski in the area. One of the locations she mentioned was a place called Chalk Creek.
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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.
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On my continuing road to recovery, it was time to try my first 14er of 2022. While none of the 14ers are genuinely easy – you’re climbing up to 14,000 feet, after all – some are easier than others. The one generally considered the easiest is Mt. Sherman, in the Mosquito range between Leadville and Fairplay. From the upper 4wd trailhead the round-trip climb is listed as under five miles with just over 2,000 feet of vertical. A perfect re-introduction to mountain climbing.
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So I was thinking of going to Leadville. Back in November when I bought my fat bike, the guys at Cycles of Life made a point of telling me about Leadville’s groomed winter trails, “One of the best places to ride snow in the area!” A couple of our neighbors cross-country ski and they also mentioned the Leadville trails to me. I figured it would be a good idea to make a trip up to the Cloud City before the snow gets melted out for the season.
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One of the things I’ve been most interested in trying now that we’re in CO is fat biking, specifically fat biking on snow.
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