Wednesday, September 4th, 2024, 1700-2000
CO 14ers: 26 of 53
Distance RT: 4.5 miles
Elevation gain/loss: 2150′
Starting Elevation: 12,000′
Summit: 14,043′
Rank: 43 of 53
Location: Mosquito Range, east of Leadville
Route: Iowa Gulch Trailhead, West slopes (route #2), Class 1
Companion: Alan
I took a long hiatus from 14ers. The last one I’d hiked was in 2022, when I joined my awesome PCT friend Suvi/Spacegoat for a section hike on the CDT. She was thru-hiking and it was a great honor to summit the highpoint of the trail together: Grays Peak. I continued to hike all the way to Leadville with her, and we had such a great time! Grays was a repeat peak for me (1st summited in 2019 when I was thru-hiking the CDT), so it didn’t count towards my CO 14er’s total. In 2020, while stuck in CO for the pandemic, I knocked out 20 14ers over the summer. In the couple years before that, I summited 5 while on the CT / CDT. I hadn’t yet committed to hiking all the Colorado 14er’s, but this round put me much closer towards that end.
Ironically, it was another CDT hiker that inspired me to take on more 14ers in 2024. I’d promised Alan (who I met in WY) that I would stalk him through Colorado, while also visiting my family. I hadn’t even planned to visit after the GDT, but when that hike was cut short, my impromptu tour of western states commenced: Montana to Wyoming to Idaho to Utah and finally Colorado. In that time, Alan had walked from the Canadian border to Camp Hale. There it became my role to corrupt, disrupt, distract, vortex and/or hikernap him from his lofty goal of finishing the CDT. But really, I was just trying to enhance his experience in my home state by compelling him to do extra miles up 14ers… because you know, CO isn’t hard enough. I might have also convinced him of skipping a few boring trail miles, but he’ll never admit to that… point is, it all evened out in the wash.
I met up with Alan the night before and we car-camped near the Mt Holy Cross trailhead. This was our intended target for the day, but we were denied by the wx gods just 1.5 miles from the summit. Dark clouds rolled in early and the radar looked even worse, so we wisely turned around. It was the first 14er I’ve ever had to give up on prior to reaching the summit. But it was a good lesson in acknowledging the bad conditions and making the right call.
A reminder that conditions change fast in the Colorado Rockies…from 8 am to 10 am. It was beautiful when we started at 0730, but a front quickly moved in. Mt Holy Cross (pictured above) did not give us her blessing this day.
We instead went to Leadville to hang out for the day, hiding from some thunderstorms and killing time. There we ate my favorite pizza from High Mountain Pies, visited a historic synagogue (Alan’s Jewish, which might explain the Mt Holy Cross denial… but also we started too late), joined the Mellie cult, and thus were miraculously granted access to Mt Sherman in the late afternoon. I suggested the hike only jokingly, figuring it was too late in the day to start going up a 14er. But Alan was game and the weather radar looked ok, so we drove the short ways out of town to give it a go.
I hadn’t been looking forward to hiking Mt Sherman, given that it’s surrounded by mining activity, but it was actually really beautiful going up for sunset. We were even blessed with a fantastic rainbow. The wind abated after the storms and it wasn’t too cold. The hiking was quite easy…I didn’t even feel the altitude. I guess all my hiking in the high elevations of the Winds and Uinta’s gave me plenty of fitness. I was really happy that we were able to squeeze in this late-day summit, turning an earlier defeat into a success.
We got lucky, because more storms came through overnight, leaving the weather unsettled through the next morning. This was when I’d been planning to hike Mt Sherman instead. That night, I slept in my rental car and Alan slept under an awning in the pizza place’s backyard…they allow thru-hikers to camp there. It rained and hailed pretty hard around midnight. We enjoyed a leisurely morning drinking coffee, then I drove Alan back to the trail. But I wasn’t done with him, as we planned to meet up in a few days near Twin Lakes, to hike more 14ers of course.