From Leadville at 10,200 ft to Denver at 5,280 ft...
From the Summit of Mt. Elbert at 14,430 ft to the summit of Pikes Peak at 14,110 ft.
This has been a week of some serious changes in altitude.
So let's catch up a bit. I've been a little spotty with my updates recently because I've been living in the mountains.
The Elbert Summit...
So we hiked in on Friday night in the pouring rain. Like I mentioned previously, we found a pretty amazing camp site that was naturally sheltered and kept us pretty dry. Saturday morning we slept in and didn't really plan on making an attempt for the summit because weather reports were predicting afternoon thunderstorms. Instead, we hiked up the mountain about 1.5 miles and cached some water at around 12,500 ft so we wouldn't have to lug it up on summit day. It also gave us a chance to acclimatize and recover a bit from Humphreys and Wheeler.
Sunday morning we got up very early for a alpine start and began our trek up the mountain. We were moving pretty fast up until we hit about 13,000 ft and the altitude and grade of the trail started to take its toll on me. The next 1.25 miles and 1,430 feet were pretty grueling. About 500 feet from the summit I got a burst of energy and it gave me the last bit of steam I needed to make it to the summit. We made it to the summit by about 11am and within a half hour there must have been about 30-40 people on the top. It was a beautiful day and most people try to make it to the summit between 11 and 1 to avoid the chances of running into afternoon thunderstorms.
Once we left the summit, the sun started to really heat up and I started to hit a wall. Typically, the decent goes much faster than the climb, but we weren't in any rush and the weather seemed to be holding up for us so we really took our time making it back to the camp. Once we made it back we just relaxed the rest of the day and hiked back to the car the next morning.
We hung around Leadville for a bit after getting off the mountain and then started making out way to Colorado Springs.
On the way, we decided to check out one of the highest suspension bridges in the world at Royal Gorge. The bridge was pretty cool, but it basically leads to a tourist trap theme park now and isn't actually used anymore so we decided against paying the $18 a person to cross it and just took a few pictures from the observation deck.
That just about catches us up now through yesterday. I will make sure we are totally up to date with my posts before leaving Denver tomorrow night.
P.S. Here is a link to some video from the Summit of Mt Elbert.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KR4KOHwXIMI
No comments:
Post a Comment