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| Cut off for trail head. Slept here for the night |
This past weekend, June 27th and 28th, 2015, I took my finalized camper car out for a test run before going off to see America. To test it, I decided to combine it with another item on my list that I've wanted to complete for a while, hike a Colorado 14er. For those unfamiliar, there are 53 peaks in Colorado with an altitude over 14,000 feet, and a prominence of at least 300 feet from any adjacent peaks.
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| Trail Head at 6 am. Had to hike 2 miles just to get here. |
I decided to do some easier peaks for a few reasons. First, these were my first 14ers, and even though I've done my research, I didn't totally know what I was getting myself into. Second, I chose a route that included a few miles of class 3 terrain, meaning I would be extremely exposed, and some light climbing/scrambling was going to be required. Finally, because even though its the last weekend in June, there's still a lot of snow at altitude, and people were still hiking up with snowboards and ski's!
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| Last 200 feet of snow to the summit of Torreys Peak. |
My route would be to take Stevens Gulch to Kelso's Ridge and summit
Torreys Peak. From there I would ride the saddle over to
Grays Peak, and then hike back down Steven's Gultch. All easy class 1 hiking except for Kelso's Ridge which had the exposed class 3 scrambling, as well as a small snow field which I had to navigate in order to summit.
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| Summit of Torreys Peak!! |
The hike turned out great! Waking up at 430 am was a bit rough, but the sun was already peaking out and sleeping in my car turned out just fine. Though my car didn't have the clearance to make it to the trail head, I was able to start hiking at 5 am, and make the 2 miles to the trail head by 6 am. (Side note, my phone has a pedometer, and by 730 am I had already reached 10,000 steps, kind of cool). The summit of Torreys Peak was made at around 930 with lots of stops to rest and take pictures. Then Grays Peak was summited at around 1045 where I stopped to have a fabulous lunch brought to me by clif bar and generic fruit snacks. The descent I took very slow in an effort to save my knees and I think I did a good job of doing that. Finally, after reaching the trail head again at 2 pm, I had officially hiked my first couple Colorado 14ers!
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| Summit of Grays Peak!! |
It was a great experience, and everything turned out great! All my gear worked, nothing felt out of place or like it was too much. Now, the next step is to to this in every single state and see how it goes!
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| Sunset on the way to the campsite at St. Mary's Glacier |
You can find all the photos from the trip on my
Flickr account here.