Hope everyone had an exciting weekend; I did, although things did not go quite as planned!
A group of us decided to head south to the Sangre de Cristo mountain range in southern Colorado in order to tackle Mt. Lindsey. Lindsey is one of the last 14ers that I have left that is compatible with doggy paws, so we decided on that peak. After all, it will be a sad day when I have to leave Tals at home!
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| The valley at the start of the hike; Mt. Lindsey is behind the tall peak on the left |
Our trailhead was roughly 4 hours away from where we all live, so we thought getting out of Denver around 3:30 would work out for us. Negative. Something ridiculous has been going on with traffic lately and we got stuck in the worst combination of rush hour-Friday traffic-Broncos training camp chaos that I have ever seen. Needless to say, our 4 hour drive turned into a 6.5 hour trek and we rocked onto Forest Road 580 around 10:30pm. Not ideal. Setting up tents at night is always fun, right?!
Regardless, Saturday dawned bright and early and Craig, Cindy, Evan, Peter, and I set off to tackle Lindsey. Both Peter and Evan were hoping for their first-ever 14er summits, and I really wanted to help them accomplish that goal!
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| Cindy taking in the view…of my camera in her face |
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| Peter was psyched to attempt his first 14er! |
(Lindsey is the peak on the far left of the screen)
Right off the bat, I could tell this trail was going to be steep! I had thought La Plata a few weeks ago was pretty vertical, but I think Lindsey beat that grade! However, the Huerfano valley was beautiful, and that definitely took my mind off the grade of the trail. 80% of our hike was through green meadows filled with wildflowers, even after we got above tree line. This NEVER happens and I really enjoyed it!
The trek up was a bit slower than usual and we took quite a few breaks along the way. As we neared 12,500 feet, I started to realize that we probably weren’t going to summit. A few people in our group were having a hard time, and there was no way we weren’t going to summit all together!
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| Cindy and me: apparently my love for Columbia gear has worn off on my friends 🙂 |
However, once we reached the saddle of Mt. Lindsey at 13,150 feet, I realized that it didn’t matter how people felt or not– we weren’t going to push it to the summit. A massive dark cloud had settle over the top of the peak, and there were no breaks of blue sky in sight. We watched the clouds for a bit, but they appeared to be very dense.
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| Stupid storm |
I’ve been doing high altitude hiking for a long time and feel like I’m a good judge of when to bail out, and I decided that this was a bail out moment. Cindy and Craig agreed, so we all decided to throw in the towel. This definitely was a bitter moment since we were only 900 feet and less than a mile from the summit, but the mountain will always be there– safety needs to be a priority!
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| Panoramic from the saddle at 13,150 |
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| The crew, minus Tals and Piglet. I think they were chasing marmots 🙂 |
We all took some photos and reveled in the fact that both Evan and Peter had made it up above 13,000 feet! This was a first for both of them so we decided that would be our accomplishment for the day 🙂
And, for your viewing pleasure, I thought I’d take another quick video so you guys could truly see what the view is like from up there! Don’t worry; this is a lot shorter and less entertaining than my last attempt at a vlog!
(Sorry it’s so little–apparently I can’t enlarge it if I didn’t upload it to YouTube. Who knew?!)
We took our time heading down, dodging raindrops the entire time. Craig and Evan hurried back to the car with thoughts of beer floating through their heads while Cindy, Peter, and I took our sweet time. Peter was having some pretty awful leg cramping so Cindy and I found a nice round stick for him to “foam roll” out the cramps. It didn’t work as well as we hoped, but the stick made an excellent walking crutch!
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| Beautiful buck near our tents |
We arrived back at the campsite a lot earlier than usual due to our lack of summit, but that just gave us more time to relax and play! The boys spent some time erecting a “man tarp” to keep us out of the rain, and I was so glad they did! Not 30 minutes after they set it up, the storm attacked and rain started to dump from the sky! Luckily, all 5 of us, the campfire wood, and the dogs fit under the tarp so we were still able to play some card games and enjoy each other’s company without getting soaked.
If you’re a number cruncher, here are the stats for the portion of the hike we did complete:
Mileage: 6.0 miles round trip (give or take since our Garmin went in and out a lot)
Elevation start: 10,700 feet
Saddle (where we stopped): 13,150 feet
Elevation gain: 2,450 feet
I’ll take 2,450 feet of gain over 3 miles any day! 800+ feet of elevation gain per mile is not an easy hike, especially considering we descended during the first half mile. I’d say my job here is done 🙂
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The three winners of the GoodBelly giveaway are:
Katie @Wish and Whimsy
Melissa @Adventure Tykes
Divya @ Eat.Teach.Blog
Please shoot me an email with your mailing info and we’ll get the GoodBelly voucher sent to you. Congrats!
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What fun things did you get after this weekend? Any great adventures??
28 Comments
I just love that you go out and do these climbs! Smart move to turn around, I’m sure. And it had to have been a really tough decision. You’ll be back, I’m sure!
I NEED to go back now! I always hate turning around, but I try to remind myself that at least we got in another beautiful day in the mountains!
This makes me want to move to Colorado. Gorgeous!
Your photos are so gorgeous! What a lovely place to go hiking!
True story, I saw you posted on twitter about climbing “Mt. Lindsay”, and I was mad that it was spelled wrong, but apparently it is spelled the right way. Good to know there’s a mountain named after me.
I am so jealous of your adventures!
The kicker is that I was initially spelling it “Lindsay” until I realized it was “Lindsey.” Apparently I don’t know how to spell it! 🙂
Because wikipedia is community-edited, you can get anything spelled the way you want, on it. You just need to have a strong posse of edit warriors, like Alyssa’s posse.
Such gorgeous pictures!! Makes me long for the mountains. Bummer that you guys didn’t summit but you’re right – it will always be there and better to be safe.
I LOVE reading all about your hiking adventures! I so wish I could do that…one day I’m visiting somewhere with mountains so I can hike! Beautiful pictures!!!
Very cool – I can’t wait to tackle my first 14er, so I love reading everyone’s experiences climbing the mountains. 🙂
Any idea which you want to do first?
sounds like you had a great weekend! the pictures are beautiful! finally had my first double digit run in 55 days! so that was great!
I read that! You are going to rock CIM, I know it!
Holla! What an awesome view (man, I just love 14ers). Way to go, prioritizing safety first. It’s hard to battle the “summit fever” and I’m mad impressed with your good judgement call. Congrats! You guys still rocked over 13,000 ft!
I’ve had a few scary lightning incidents above treeline, so I learned my lesson. It’s never easy, but I kinda like to live! 🙂
Holy smokes! Thanks for the GoodBelly voucher. Super stoked to try it.
Bummer about summiting but you’re right, safety is so much more important. I still have yet to summit Mt. Sneffels. Last attempt was interrupted due to thunderstorms.
An honest attempt. That’s the problem with climbing-the afternoon weather. I guess it makes it all the more sweeter for those climbs when you do reach the summit. Sounds like a fun weekend with friends none-the-less
Yeah, it definitely isn’t ideal but it’s probably partially our fault too– we got a later start than we should have. If we had started maybe an hour earlier, we might have been able to do it C’est la vie! 🙂
Yay! What a great way to start my Monday. Thanks for the great giveaway! Emailing you soon.
Beautiful!
Looks like an amazing time! Very beautiful!
Smart to turn around…I did the same thing on Princeton only 400′ from the summit, but kept telling myself what Ed Viesturs said:
“Getting to the top is optional. Getting down is mandatory.”
Ed Viesturs is awesome too, so I love that I listened to him 🙂
LOVE all of the beautiful pictures! Sounds like you had a great time, even though you had to cut it short (that was smart). Hubs and I are headed to Sun Valley, ID this week and I can’t wait to get some hikes in. I’m totally motivated after this post 🙂
Great Job! I still have to do that one! We just got back from Chicago Basin. We hiked in from Purgatory vs. taking the train. Got to summit Sunlight, Windom and Eolus in one day. It was so tough but awesome!
Nice post! I actually did my first 14er the same day! Me and a friend did Mt. Bierstadt, I posted my post on it today. (And I totally agree about the traffic lately. No matter where I go, north or south or east or west, it’s been insane). racingthestats.wordpress.com
How many points was that buck? And where are the photos of skinning & cooking the marmots and the deer?
Is it because it wasn’t a 14-er, so you ignored it, because you only do 14 point deer?
Better safe than sorry…although it does suck to have to turn around. Lately the storms have been rolling in earlier – hit Mt Evans yesterday around 12:30 – so we are heading out extra early for Sherman tomorrow. Probably far earlier than necessary, but we want to take our time and make it, without a storm cloud!