Do you ever get a thought or idea in your head that just won’t go away? One of those brain worms that burrows in to your subconscious and persists over months, popping into your head at the weirdest times? Over the past couple of years, for me it has been the thought of skiing the Angel of Shavano.
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Approaching the top of Monarch Pass from Salida, a high ridge rises above the highway from across the drainage on the left side of the road. The ridge runs northeast to southwest and ties into the Continental Divide above the Monarch Crest parking lot where the tourist gondola runs in the summer.
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The key factor in staying safe when going out into the backcountry in winter is understanding what is going on with the snow. And what is going on with the snow, you might be asking? Well, as I learned in a recent avalanche course, a whole lot.
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To start off 2023 Mother Nature gifted the Sawatch range and indeed, most of Colorado, with a major dump of new snow. The Colorado Avalanche Information Center map went red overnight. High avalanche danger = great skiing. Just make sure you stay inbounds.
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After my recent ignoble defeat on the Wetterhorn, I was thinking that I would be ending my 2022 climbing season on a down note.
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Peak bagging is a strange pastime. Getting up at gawdawful hours of the morning, driving all over the state to spend all day walking up and down steep slopes until your toenails turn black all because a mountain appears on some arbitrary list. Is a 13,000-foot mountain less worthy of climbing than a 14,000-foot mountain? No. But the 14,000-foot mountain is on a list. Actually, the 13,000-foot mountain is on a list too, a different list. But one list at a time.
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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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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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