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??