| Sawatch |
| Mt. Shavano and Mt. Tabeguache--The Sawatch range provides some of my favorite memories. I climbed Tabeguache and Shavano in 1974. These two were among my first. I don't remember these mountains very well, but I see them every time I drive to Salida and they still look wonderful. Mt. Antero--This is a good mountain to climb if you don't want to do much work. If you drive to the end of the road (13,800 feet) you don't have to do a lot of climbing. Either way there is a road that goes that high so if you walk it isn't difficult. There are a lot of minerals on this mountain so don't be surprised if you see some prospectors on the mountain with you. Princeton--This was an exciting somewhat accidental climb. I drove over to Buena Vista intending to climb Mt. Harvard. I was quite a ways up, but the weather on Mt. Harvard was deteriorating so I decided to find another mountain to climb. When I looked in my handy guide book I found that Princeton had a road that went up quite a ways. I (mistakenly) drove to the end of the road where I could look up and see the top. I told my son I would be back in an hour. You can imagine my sruprise when i arrived at the 'top' and saw that I was on a subsummit. I think it was only high 12s and the real Princeton was a long way off. Well there was nothing to do but go to the top so I did. I didn't get back to the car untila bout 3-4 hours after this, but I followed the trail most of the way down arriving, you guessed it, about 2 miles below the car. M. Yale--I tried this in June of 1999. I went up the beginning of June which would have been my earliest sumit, but I ran into a large snowfield, and then it started snowing quite hard. I could not see the top so decided to come down. It was fun coming down--I went miles on snow. I returned on July 5 and made it to the top on a beautiful day with about 70 other people along the way. One gentleman pointed to the top of a small hill with tres on the top and asked his companion if that was the top. This was about noon. I doubt they made it. Mt. Harvard and Columbia Peak--It was my third attempt at Harvard before I made it to the top. It was much easier when I went the easy way. The route to Columbia was a little more interesting. I arrived at the top while it was snowing and went down fairly rapidly so I could stay warmer--also didn't want to get caught in a snowstorm. I didn't find the regular route down so followed a creek quite a ways. Oxford, Belford, and Missouri--I climbed these all in one day. I started on Missourri and went across a difficult traverse to Oxford and Belford which are connected by an easy ridge. This was a particularly nice climb in that I met a family going down as I was headed up off the Missourri traverse. They ha not made it to the top, but the man turned around to go with me. There was thunder and lightening around us, but we stayed out of the storm, and enjoyed the electrical show around us. La Plata and Huron--not much to sayabout these two. I climbed them both from the trailhead in Winfield. I think I did in the neighborhood of 10,000 vertical feet in that 24 hours--the afternoon before is when I did Antero. Mt. Of the Holy Cross--I climbed this a couple days after my first attempt on Mt. Yale. This was during a family reunion so I was in Avon. I got up early and started climbing in the snow. It wasn't snowing there was just about 10 feet on the trail. I climbed this peak on June 13, and expected some snow, but not as much as I found myself in. Fortunately there were people ahead of me so i followed their footprints. This ended up being a beautiful climb, made even more so by my sighting of the cross coulour. If you stay on the trail you don't see the coulour, but I couldn't see the trail so was just headed toward the high spot. I didn't go up the coulour though so had to hike over to the normal route, once I figued out where it should be. The climb to the top from the ridge was pretty easy. It was along hike out, and I was tired by the time I returned to Avon. Back to Mountains. Return to home page.. |