Our first fourteener
Day one: it's a long weekend, so of course we are getting the heck out of dodge. We decided that our 15 year old black lab is going to live forever, so it was time to get some Colorado camping in. We have a great petsitter that has been taking him for daily walks at lunch and we are leaving him with her for the first time. Last time he traveled with us he whined alllll night. We think he would rather just be at home where he knows where everything is and he doesn't have to rely on his poor vision to maneuver around furniture in the middle of the night.Our plan for the first night was to head toward Fairplay and hope we find a camping spot. We were out of luck at the regular campsites but the park host directed us to an area that was less than a mile away up a 4x4 road, that was open camping. So not only did we find a nice spot along a picturesque creek with no one around, but we got to throw the Jeep into 4 wheel drive and run through a creek and climb a few rocky hills. It was great practice for tomorrow, when we plan to do the 22 mile 4 wheel drive only Mosquito Pass. That will take us to the Leadville area where, on Sunday we plan to summit Huron Peak, one of the many fourteeners in Colorado. It's supposed to be one of the easier ones, so we thought it would be a good place to start.We pitched the tent and quickly discovered that it has been so long since we've been real camping (not that mamby pamby car camping stuff) that apparently we've forgotten what to pack. So far on our list of things left behind (that we will be buying tomorrow): spoon, toilet paper, hand sanitizer and one of our freeze dried dinners (yum!). Now those may sound like trivial things, but when you are in the middle of nowhere and want to eat or possibly go #2, those things suddenly seem very important. Todd is actually in the process of attempting to whittle us a spoon before dinner. :) After dinner with Todd's make-shift spoon we had a nice little camp fire and were surprised by a mammoth rabbit that hopped right up to us and just crouched there watching us less than a foot away.
Day two:After a rather sleepless night due to the unexpected cold temperatures, we crawled out of our tent around 8am. That was a late start for us, but we had a hard time getting moving. Neither of us had expected it to drop into the 40s overnight. We slowly packed up and got on the road and headed into Fairplay, CO to gas up and get breakfast (we were still spoon-less, so the oatmeal we packed is going to wait).Next stop, Mosquito Pass! This is a 22 mile old mining road that is now a 4 wheel drive road that takes you up to over 13,100 feet and back down. We have had a Jeep Wrangler for over 6 years and we have never gone off roading with it. So we weren't sure what to expect. We were amazed at what we could climb over and through in our Cherry Bomb (that's the name we came up with for the Jeep )! Parts of the road went straight up for miles and Cherry Bomb just slowly crawled over everything that was in her way. Along the way we met a four wheel drive club, about 6 Jeep owners who go out in groups on weekends, and a group of 5 dirt bikers that made it up and back down much faster than our 5 mph average. We had a blast and were rewarded with some stunning views at the top.
Then we visited Leadville for lunch and to finally buy a spoon (actually a spoon, fork, knife combo). It was a mining area that is now surrounded by thousands of abandoned mines. The city center is a touristy old town with cute shops. We found a Chinese restaurant for lunch and wandered around for a little while before heading back out to nature.When we headed for our campsite at the foot of Mount Huron we were following directions in a book about all the fourteeners. We didn't notice it but there were actually two sets of directions one that would take you to the East side of the mountain (these were the ones we were following) and the ones to the northwest side of the mountain (this was were we had intended to go). We had another bumpy and wet four wheel drive getting to the camp site, but it was well worth it. When we reached the end of the road, we pulled into an empty field of wildflowers surrounded by majestic mountain peaks. We soon realized that we had followed the wrong directions, but the beauty of the area and the long drive back made us decide to stay where we were for the night. We set up camp and spent several hours trying to find the trail that supposedly would take us up the East side of the mountain. We never found it and decided to change up our plans and climb Huron on Monday after we made our way around to the other side where there was promised to be a well-marked trail. We relaxed, watched deer grazing in the meadow, built a fire, sipped some hot chocolate and made sure to prepare better to stay warm while we slept.
Day Three:We slept well last night, even though the temperatures dipped into the 30s. We are finally getting back into camping mode and remembering how this all works. Since we decided not to hike Huron today, we woke up late again and relaxed while making breakfast and using our new spoon. Once we we were all packed up we said good-bye to our beautiful valley and headed toward Buena Vista. As its name indicates it does have a beautiful view. It's a cute little town in the middle of yet another beautiful, mountain surrounded, valley. We've driven through so many of them on this trip and each time we find ourselves in one, we just can't believe how amazingly gorgeous Colorado is and how lucky we are that we have moved here!We had coffee and lunch in Buena Vista and then made a stop at their outdoors store in town. Kelly has been wearing the same pants since Friday morning and only packed shorts as an alternate (can you tell we thought it would be warmer?), even Todd has agreed that purchasing a pair of pants would be a good idea. With all our eating and gear buying done for the day we headed back to the Mount Huron area.This time we went the right direction and even though we were only two miles down the road from our campsite from last night, we were a world away on the other side of Mount Huron. It was in an equally beautiful valley only accessible by 4 wheel drive, but was a little more populated, which just confirmed that we were in the right place. We found the trailhead easily and the trail appeared well marked, so we found a spot close by to camp for the night. We had camp set up by 4pm, so we decided to check out the area a little more before we started dinner. We had driven by an old mine site on the way in, so we headed back to it to check it out more. As soon as we walked up we came upon a deer wandering around the same area. Kelly swears it's the same one from last night and it just made the two mile hike. It did not appear to be afraid of humans in the least and actually allowed us to get rather close and take some nice pictures. Once we had our fill of deer pictures we moved on and got some fun photos around the old abandoned mine buildings. We hiked up to where the actual mine had been and found that someone had left a tiki torch on a mound of stuff that had been pulled out of the mine. We toyed with the idea of moving it to our campsite so we could use the tiki torch, but decided we would leave it for others to enjoy.As we made dinner and settled in for the evening, it began to sprinkle. The sun was setting and the combination of the sun and rain made a subtle but noticeable rainbow right above the peak we were camping under. Kelly thinks its a sign that we were right in coming to this side to hike Huron tomorrow.
Day Four:We debated when to wake up to start our hike up Huron. The rule of thumb with fourteeners is you want to be up at the summit and back down to treeline before the daily rain comes through, which in this area appeared to be 3pm. You generally want to be up and going at dawn, but this is supposed to be an easier trail and we had someone tell us yesterday that it was only a four hour hike. Kelly wanted to still get going at dawn, but Todd felt we could sleep in until 8am. We compromised on waking up at 6:30 and have everything packed up and start our hike before 8am. We ended up at the trailhead at 7:45. We saw a handful of people take off before us, but a majority of the people we saw throughout our hike started between 8 and 9.How to describe our "easy" summit to Mount Huron, which barely counts as a fourteener, coming in at 14,003 ft ? The hike is ONLY 2.5 miles each way , but in those 2.5 miles you climb straight up for almost 3500 feet. The high altitude was a little worrisome to us, since we have not had a good chance to check how well we had adjusted to the altitude since moving to Denver. Six years ago we drove from Nebraska to the Rocky Mountain National Park for camping and Kelly hit a wall at 10,000 ft and Todd couldn't get much higher. This time we were starting out at 10,600 feet and heading up to 14,003. We had no idea what to expect and we were fine with playing it safe by heading back down if necessary.It was a tough climb. Luckily it was very scenic and we were able to distract ourselves with the occasional stop for a photo or to let another group of hikers pass us by. I can't tell you how many groups of 20-somethings passed us as we were going up. It definitely made us feel our age. We found ourselves asking "why exactly did we wait until 37 and 40 to hike our first fourteener?". The last mile of the hike is almost straight up and at about 13,500 feet Kelly started to feel the affects of altitude sickness. We were so close and Todd was not willing to let her quit, so we slowed down and took a lot of stops to catch our breath and drink water. When we finally summited after 4 hours, we were rewarded by not only having accomplished our first fourteener and the amazing views from the top, but a young couple soon joined us at the top and the boy dropped to one knee and proposed to his girlfriend right there at the top of Mount Huron!It was such a special moment and at that point we were glad that we had taken longer than we had hoped to get to the top. Everyone on the summit joined in on congratulating the couple, taking pictures, and one even offered up a celebratory beer for the couple to share. It was a lovely moment and we wish them the best - they appear to be on the way to their own Life Extraordinaire...After enjoying the celebration at the top, we began the trek down. The going was much faster and we even stopped to fly our pocket kite that we bring with us on camping trips. We cut our ascent time in half on the way down and managed the whole hike in 6 hours. When we reached the Jeep, we kicked off our boots and reluctantly began the journey back home.
