Mt. Elbert, Colorado

If you're planning on doing this trip, it will be a lot more fun if you train first! You could quickly tell with a glance at the faces going up who had trained and who hadn't. The trail is basically uphill 99% of the time. At times it's pretty steep, although no scrambling or bouldering is required.



Here's my pal Tucker pointing to the peak from Leadville, a few miles from the base town of Twin Lakes. You may want to rent a 4WD for the jeep road which leads to the trail head. We had a Dodge Durango 2WD which wasn't quite up to the task. This added another 3 miles or so to the round trip as we had to walk up the jeep road to the trailhead.



The jeep trail had a couple of deep ruts coming around this bend, and after seeing a 4WD almost flip, we decided to park and walk from here.



You'll have to drive through this creek, which is still about a mile out from the trailhead along the jeep trail. Another trip report described a Geo Metro which made it through the jeep road - that would have been fun to watch.




If you're walking, you can get around the creek by crossing these logs. They're wet from the spray, but at least there's a log to hold onto!



We are greeted by some Aspen shortly up the trail. Several nice campsites are set-up along the road before you get to the trailhead.



Finally, after a mile and a half of Jeep road, we arrive at the official starting point of the south Elbert Trail.

We began our hike late, about 8:30AM., as we planned on camping about a mile above the treeline the first day. We would then just relax, acclimate some more, sleep, and do an early summit. Unfortunately it played out differently. Since we hadn't really used loaded packs in a while, we were carrying too much, and couldn't make the original campsite. We ended up dropping our gear at the first big clearing, a few hundred yards short of the treeline. That was too soon (about 11:30) to set up camp, so we decided to attempt to summit, now carrying a much lighter load.



The rounded clearing at the lower right of the photo is where we dropped our gear to set up later for camp. We were just short of the halfway point here.



There were LOTS of other climbers today - perhaps 85 people and about ten dogs. These two dogs had brought along two really cute college- age girls to keep them company. We met them early on. Later, I got a picture of the girls as they were headed back down from the peak. I was surprised to see lots of ladies of all ages on the hike. A five-year-old girl peaked with her dad who was helping her back down. Lots of couples, I'd say a full third of the hikers were gals. There was also a scout troop there, perhaps 30 or so counting the Dads.




Once we got past the third large clearing we finally go out of the treeline. Now you can really see the last few lingering patches of snow scattered around. There is a really steep section after the clearings, a short respite, then an even steeper section.



Tucker took this shot of me at our first little break before we dropped most of our stuff. Some folks were surprised that we were able to cram our air mattresses, tent, food, ground cloths, and enough water for an overnight in our small daypacks! By the way, there are places to get water if you have a good filter. Had I known that, we wouldn't have lugged 6-7 pounds of water each the whole way up.

I also wanted to mention how friendly the people from Colorado were. Almost everyone we met was from there, and they were very nice and talkative. There were some nice folks from Oklahoma too. And the ladies were so "outdoorsy" and healthy, it was refreshing to meet such nice folks....






Just beyond the pass you see at right-center, the wind picks up for a while. It didn't last long, as you start to get some shelter from the peaks as you do the next steep section. After this pass is a tough section, and it starts getting more rocky.



These two scouts in front of me were playing "leapfrog" with me as we passed each other several times over almost a three mile stretch. It inspired this oldtimer (almost 50) to be able to keep up with a couple of twelve year olds....



I took a little half-mile side trip over to examine this alpine pond a little closer. This is close to where we had wanted to camp originally. Would have been a good spot to refill the canteens.



A closeup of the pond..... clear water is rushing in from the melting snow. Crystal clear, but still needs to be filtered I suppose.



Getting closer to the clouds....




This fat little marmot was expecting some food for this pose. Sorry little buddy, I'm too tired to dig in my pack right now. At this point, about the last 3/4 mile, I get into a rhythm of ten baby steps, stop, count to ten, ten baby steps, stop count to ten. Not much air to breathe, I always start to slow down after passing the 13,000 foot mark.



A photo near the snow..... I got much closer to this stuff on the way down, somewhat by accident.....




The girls that the dogs in the earlier photo brought along. They're headed back down already; notice they didn't even break a sweat.



Not much further now!






Hey, finally made it. That was pretty tough.

Now......how can I screw this up?




A closer view of the thin icy crust on top....




The saddle you see near center, is about half a mile away. Somehow I came down the wrong way, since I'm supposed to be on that saddle. Either I climb back up and backtrack, or cross the steep mountainside where there's no trail through loose scree...




Going up is not an option, so I decide to cross over. The first shot here is looking back across the scree strewn slope when I'm half way.



And here I am looking across at the remaining scree field yet to be crossed.



The drop off into "Emerald Lake" is where you fall if you slip in the scree field...



Here's what the sunset looked like from our campsite on the mountainside that nite. We got a little three-hour rain, when I discovered my "bivy sack" wasn't very waterproof. Also had my first little episode of altitude sickness, even though I was fine earlier at 3,000 feet higher altitude.

Overall, a wonderful hike, my first "fourteener". I was really pumped after this one, and even now, several days later, I'm inspired to plan the next state high point!