The post La Plata (Northwest Ridge) appeared first on iLikeTrails.

This adventure started the Friday before Labor Day at 5am.  I drove down the night before and crashed in the Forester at the Leadville fish hatchery where everybody was planning to head out.  Me and Israel discussed the game plan for the 1st mountain. he was going to go up the Nolan’s 14 route from the fish hatchery and I was going to drive around and meet him in between Mt Massive and Elbert. I drove around to the south side of Massive and decided to try and knock it out via the standard route, the worst that could happen is I would meet Israel coming down and would have to turn back.  We ended up meeting about 20 minutes off of the Massive summit, at that point I was not going to turn back 20 minutes below the Mt. Massive summit so Israel kept on heading down the mountain and I cruised up to the summit, took a couple pictures and hauled ass down the mountain to catch back up with him.
Mt Elbert from Mt Massive – The next peak in line

The climb from hell!

I managed to haul enough ass to catch back up with Israel just before he hit the standard Mt Massive TH. We jogged down the road to where I had parked, took a short break to refuel and then started the adventure up Mt. Elbert.  Not going to lie this route kicked my ass, the 1st 3 miles were not bad.  But at mile 3 you turn off the 4wd road and head straight up a gully to the summit. You are a mile off of the summit from the road, but this mile involves climbing 3,000+ Ft to get to the summit!  It took us just under a hour to make the climb and my quads were happy it was over at the summit!  I took the standard route back down to the car with plans of meeting Israel at the Winfield aid station on the other side of La Plata.

Israel after spending the night in a snow storm on La Plata

I met Israel around 9:00 the next morning as he was coming off of the La Plata summit.  He has a lot of spring in his step for having just spent the night on the summit of a 14er in a snow storm.  I can not imagine how cold he was at 3:30 am on that summit, it was 32 degrees in my car at 10,000ft, it must have been border line unbearable on that summit! I hiked up the trail with a couple of the girls from the aid station with hot food and water, he looked very excited to see the food, he practically pounced on the Ziploc bag of gummy bears they had brought him!

After a short break at the aid station we set off up the road to tackle Huron Peak.  The hike up Huron was overcast, cold, and snowy.  It felt really weird hiking up the mountain as everyone else was bailing out and heading back down.  We got the typical “be careful, we don’t want to read about you in the paper” lectures from the people going down the mountain.  By the time we were on the summit of Huron the clouds had dispersed and the weather was actually pretty nice on the summit, minus the wind.  The typical Nolan’s 14 route is to drop down a steep slope off of the East side of Huron and then back up a steep slope to Missouri. As neither of us were 100% familiar with that route and we were almost guaranteed to have to do it in the dark, we decided to head back down the standard Huron route and follow the road back to the Missouri Gulch TH.  We decided to get a full nights sleep at the trail head and then tackle Missouri, Belford, Oxford in the morning.

The next morning we headed out around 6:30 up the dreaded Missouri Gulch switch backs (never again!).  I have been up Missouri before so I just followed the standard trail up while Israel hiked straight up the side of the mountain. We met back up on the ridge heading over to the summit.  From the ridge we hiked a little under a mile up to the summit, took our pictures, grabbed some video and discussed our ascent off of Missouri.  I have to say I am very pleased with the route we took down, it was so much fun!  The route was incredibly steep with ankle deep scree which you basically floated on top of, it felt like skiing on snow.  It took us about 10 minutes to descend from 14 to 12.8.  Once down in the valley between Missouri and Belford we decided not to backtrack for the standard route up Belford and just went up straight up the side.  This was a great choice and was a walk in the park after crawling up Elbert on my hands and knees!

We were greeted with 50mph + winds on the summit of Belford and did not stick around on the summit for long, we took a few pictures and immediately started hoofing it over to Oxford. The traverse over to Oxford was pretty uneventful besides the ungodly cold winds and legs that were begging to quit.

The plan at the beginning of the day was to stop at Oxford, and by the time we got to that summit there was only about 3 hours left in the race, which was not enough time to get over to the other 2 summits. Israel managed to hike across 7 consecutive peaks in the 60 hour time limit which is a huge accomplishment!  I honestly would have called it quits after the night on La Plata!  Any who Great job on your 1st attempt Israel you are a true inspiration!

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HamBEARger says wake up!Tabegauche Peak from Mt. Shavano

There were no route finding issues at all on either of these peaks.  This was my 2nd time up both of these summits so I really just wanted to get them over with!  It took me about 2 hours to get to the Shavano summit and then another hour to get over to Tab and back.  I was back in my sleeping bag reading a book by 11:30am. In hind sight I could have probably bagged another peak that afternoon, the weather was perfect!
Mt. Shavano from Tabegauche Peak

As I was resting up near the trail head a few groups of people came down talking about a guy who was moving really slow and having a hard time making his way down Shavano. At that point I had no other 14er plans for the day so I grabbed a little extra water and headed back up to make sure this guy was doing all right.  I ran into him about 3 miles up the trail just below tree line and honestly he was doing fine, just a little slow and tired after tackling both 14ers.  He did not accept any water or food from me but I decided to hike back out with him for moral support because I have been in his position before and know how much having someone to chat with makes the miles go by a little faster. Early morning on Mt. Princeton.

The rest of my day was spent napping, driving into town to eat an entire pizza solo and trying to find the Mt. Antero trail head.  After 2 hours of looking at the map and driving back and forth on the same road I decided to just skip Antero and camp at the Princeton trail head instead. I managed to make it just past the radio towers on the 4×4 road, cutting the trip almost in half from the bottom parking lot.
A look back at the trail up Mt. Princeton

Again the hike up Princeton was really straight forward, you can see the trail and summit almost the entire hike. I cruised on up to the summit seeking out crazy marmots on the way up, unfortunately they were either all still sleeping or got they got the memo that the marmot paparazzi was on the mountain.

Mt Princeton took me 3 and a half hours which got me back to the car by 9:30am.  This gave me plenty of time to drive over to Yale and check another 14er off the list.  Normally I would not start a 14er at 11:30am but the skies were completely clear and I went into it fully prepared to abandon the hike if the weather took a turn.
Curious Goat did not want to share my snickers

The hike up Mt. Yale was a little longer than Princeton but the weather held out and it was a perfect day to chill out on the summit and enjoy a snack and laugh at the wild life.  There was a very curious goat that scared me half to death, I was sitting down in the pile of rocks in the picture below and he just cruised right up and peeked his head over the ledge. I am pretty sure he did not see me because he scampered away as soon as he realized there was a person sitting there.

Yale Summit
Cold and windy Belford summit approach!

Very low visibility on the summit!

After my day on Yale I slept at the Missouri Gulch trail head with high hopes of bagging Belford, Oxford, Missouri.  I hit the trail bright and early,  but ended up hiking into a snow storm hanging over the Missouri Gulch valley. There were a lot of people turning back but after hiking the switch backs up to Missouri Gulch I as not leaving with out at least one peak! There was no thunder or lightning, just really high winds and snow.  I was able to tolerate the weather up to the Belford summit but it was complete white out conditions at the summit so I cut my losses and headed back down with 1 of the 3 summits I wanted for the day because I knew I would be back in the area helping a friend with his Nolan’s 14 attempt.  Stay tuned for that write up!

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So I have been toying with this idea of summiting 30 14ers before I turn 30 this November.  What better time to start this challenge than the last day of a long holiday weekend?  After a Friday and Saturday full of fireworks, beer and soccer I was ready to get the 14er season started!  I packed up my car and left Denver around 6:00 p.m, made it to the trail head just a little after 8:00 p.m., Set my alarm for 2:45 a.m and made myself as comfortable as one can get in a Subaru Impreza.  The night was filled with tossing, turning and very little sleep, I will definitely be sleeping in a tent during the rest my 14er adventures.  Around 2:30 a.m. I gave up trying to sleep, threw on my pack and headlamp and hit the trail.

I decided on following the South Slopes route as I Originally planned on bagging Harvard and traversing across to Columbia, but that did not happen due to getting a tad bit lost on my way up Harvard.

The best part about starting a 14er hike at 2:30 is the peace and quite.

A little after I broke tree line I quickly lost the trail.  This turned my nice trail hike into a bushwhacking through willows, post holing through snow, and scrambling over boulders type of adventure.  I could see head lamps off in the distance, so I knew I was least going the right direction (I just happened to not pick the path of least resistance).  My route involved following the East side of Horn Fork Basin, which was basically right below the traverse over to Columbia (Doh!).

A look back on Mt. Columbia from the North end of Horn Fork Basin.  “She will be mine.  Oh yes, she will be mine.”

Once I reached the north end of the basin I eyeballed a cairn off in the distance, this was a very welcome sight because it meant I was a almost back on the trail!  I joined back up with the trail just as it started switching back up to the final ridge before the summit.  This was probably one one of the easier summits I have done, It was short and sweet, no false summit after false summit.  I was welcomed by 2 noisy mountain goats when I reached the top of the ridge, I spent a few minutes being entertained by them running, sliding, and hopping their way down a gully full of lose rocks.  After laughing at the goats I made the final push to the summit.

You’ve goat to be kidding me!

I even managed to run a good chunk of the downhill back to the car. One day I will have the quads to run more of the uphill!

After taking full advantage of the unbelievably calm conditions on the summit I started my trek back to the car.  I took a short nom nom nom break at Bear Lake and then continued on my way.  Over all it was a good day, with 14.9 miles round trip and roughly 7 hours on the mountain.  Hopefully the next 29 go a little more smoothly as far as staying on the trail!

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