COLORADO - August 2022

Our hiking group had originally planned to travel to Colorado in August 2020 to get some acclimation before Kilimanjaro in September 2020. Obviously, that was all postponed due to the pandemic. Then in 2021, dates didn’t work to do Colorado before Kili.

Earlier this year, Tam resurrected the Colorado idea, to coincide with her 60th birthday. She had the idea for 60,000 feet of elevation for her 60th birthday (she’s an overachiever)! She found a fabulous AirBnB that could sleep 10+, and we made our way to Colorado (Jeff and I flew to Denver and rented a car), the others from WI drove out, and George & Kimberly joined us for a few days from Texas!

Our cabin is between Fairplay and Alma – great location for access to numerous “14ers.” The weather is cool, and afternoon thunderstorms mean we have to get up early to get off the mountain (or back down to treeline) before the storms hit.

Day one (August 22, 2022) Colorado hiking

Jeff and I had been in Colorado about 36 hours, the others 3 days – so we set out for an early acclimation hike today. We practiced the “pole pole” we learned on Kilimanjaro and easily hiked a 6.8 mile trail up 1900 feet to 13,362 (NorthStar Peak) - working up to 14ers later in the week. Back to the cabin by noon - before the rain,

George and Kimberly arrived from Texas – we had lunch, the guys had a pool tournament. We discovered the power had been off to the hot tub, so we settled for yoga and R&R. Fabulous first day!

Day Two (August 23, 2022)

We set out early today for our first 14er. We left the cabin at 5am, scraping the ice off the cars to get started. We were headed to Mt Sherman, 8 miles as the crow flies, but over an hour on a bumpy gravel road to the trailhead. We arrived and started hiking just after 6am - 12,000ft headed to 14. It was a blast to be hiking with the 8 that summited Mt Kilimanjaro last September - lots of parallels and comparisons to that today! One difference though was the actual frost on the rocks made many of the surfaces quite slippery – I didn’t care for that at all!!

Jeff and I stopped at 13,700 - the knife edge trail to the peak was too much for me! A five-hour adventure, then back to our cabin for lunch. After lunch, we all went back out for another three miles with Kimberly, the newest member of our group. We hiked the Beaver Creek trail nearby - beautiful forest, a creek that ran through a swamp, and industrious beavers – would have been perfect habitat for moose, but we didn’t see any.

Back to the cabin for hot tub and margaritas, until our party was cut short by a hailstorm!

Blessed to have this gang to adventure with!!

Day Three (August 24, 2022)

We planned a more relaxed day today. Everyone awoke at a more leisurely pace, made omelets for breakfast, and we were in the cars heading out by 9am. We selected Tie Hack Trail, because its in the forest with less climb. It was 6 miles, 800 feet of elevation gain – so not easy, but Kimberly hiked with us and it was great to have the group together. I also really enjoyed being able to drop back for photos and still catch the group (but I’d forget about the altitude and run a few steps and then nearly collapse)!

It was an enjoyable morning. We encountered a few other people; two ladies with really cool dogs. We didn’t encounter any wildlife, but we are a large fairly noisy group!!

Back to our cabin for lunch, and then Gary, Lynn, Tam and I headed out for a 4 mile, 500 ft out and back – Wheeler Trail to Crystal Lake (and Upper Crystal Lake). The first half was along a jeep road (that we wouldn’t have been able to drive our SUV’s on). There were major puddles, and detours around the puddles into the brush that was as tall as us – kind of fun. Between the lakes there were many mining ruins, and several marmots that seem to have taken up residence there. They really didn’t seem to mind us much and we were able to get good photos of them.

Day Five (August 26, 2022)

We took a day off hiking yesterday to spend the day in Breckenridge. Jeff and I had booked massages, some of the group went to the Barney Ford Museum, others shopped, and we all met up for lunch. After lunch, we said good-bye to George and Kimberly (headed back to Austin as they’re going to Tanzania for safari next week), and the rest of us headed back to the cabin. Jeff and I stopped at the grocery store and bought salmon and veggies for dinner. Great early evening and early to bed to rest up for today’s epic day!!

Today we planned to hike the “DeCaLiBron” and it encompasses Mts Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross - FOUR 14ers, eight miles and 3700 ft elevation gain.

We were up early, arriving at the Kite Lake trailhead at 6am. It was still dark, and we could see hikers already working their way up the mountain, their headlamps reminding me of our night

time assent of Mt Kilimanjaro.

There were a lot of people heading up the trail in the early morning hour. The most impressive “hiker” was a little three-legged dog. A dog of that size with ALL FOUR legs would have struggled, but this little lady had some guts and determination! Her owner said she was 4 years old, and was hit by a car 8 months ago and that’s how she lost her leg. When the boulders got really big (tough steps for all of us), he put her in his pack for a bit, but once they got to the top, she was running around like 14,000 feet didn’t bother her one bit!

We got to the saddle between Mt Democrat and Mt Cameron, with about 500 ft of gain left to go to the summit of Democrat on an out-and-back trail. Not surprising, there were several young folks that were coming down as we went up – those were the headlamps we’d seen, and they probably summited at daybreak.

It’s always surprising how tough the last 500 ft of gain is when you’re already above 13,000 feet. But “pole pole” got us all there, feeling great! We took photos of the guys (and dog) from Kansas City, and they took photos of us. The view from the top was amazing, but we didn’t linger as we had other peaks to scale!

Down to the saddle, and up about 500 ft of elevation to the summit of Mt Cameron. The top of that was flat and afforded an amazing view. Quick photo, and on our way to Mt Lincoln – not much down, more just across the saddle and up a bit of a rock wall. We’d been above tree line all day, so finding a place to pee was quite a challenge – plus there were more people than we’d seen all week out there. On the way to Mt Lincoln I went down into a mine shaft crater to pee, with Jeff standing guard. Its just nature, and everyone needs to do it, you just hope they abide by the “avert your eyes” hiker code!

A couple at the top of Mt Lincoln had major signs, ticking off their list of the 14er’s they’d scaled, and they took a photo of us with their professional looking Mt. Lincoln sign. The woman had two new hips and wasn’t sure she’d be back on her 14er journey, so she was understandably emotional to have accomplished her climb today!

It seemed that many people were going back the long way, as Mt Bross was technically “closed” at the top. But we’d heard that you can scale the trail along the face of it, and the trail hits a point above 14,000 feet – so that counts as a 14er – that’s the route we opted for.

It had been clouding up, and as we descended down the face to Mt Bross, it started raining, making the rocks a bit slippery and the going down slower (it was a fairly steep descent, so we’d have been slow anyway). Compared to the misery factor I’d felt coming down Kilimanjaro, this descent was NOTHING! I really enjoyed the whole day, and the feeling of accomplishment it brought!!

The rain was heavier the last hour, and it was cool, but not cold (thankful for the Gore-Tex jacket and waterproof gloves) – also that we had no severe weather with lightning! When we got to the parking lot, we were two of just a handful of cars left, the smarter people had already moved off the mountain before the rain.

Back to the cabin for hot tub, cold beer and another fun dinner. JT and I head to Boulder tomorrow for a different adventure, the remaining 5 will do one more hike before departing on Sunday. It’s been an awesome week!

Saturday August 27, 2022

We left the cabin about 9am, all but Kent headed out about the same time to do another hike (Kent had a slight fall on the way down yesterday and has an issue with his hand – very swollen, possibly broken fingers, but as a former wrestler – he’s tougher than the average guy).

We drove through Breckenridge and Dillon – surprised by all the growth that had occurred in the 20+ years since I’d spent much time in Colorado. The day grew warmer when we left the Fairplay / Alma area – they’ve had uncharacteristic wet and cold.

Our evening destination was to see the musical duo “Moors and McCumber,” performing a concert at Kort McCumber’s land in the mountains outside Boulder. If you’ve followed my blogs, you might remember that they’re the duo that entertained us each night when we rafted the Middle Fork of the Salmon River in Idaho in 2020. We saw them at a benefit concert for Music Makes a Difference, a Madison based non-profit the night before we flew to Denver. When we told Kort we were headed to Colorado the next day, he invited us to this concert – which was too good of an offer to pass up.

We really had the day to kill, so we took the back roads to Boulder, leaving I-70 at the Idaho Springs exit. We climbed the Central City parkway (paved with casino money), and when we got to Central City a festival was getting underway so we stopped and walked around a bit. It was going to be a beer festival and was just being set up. We poked around and walked into an antique store and chatted with the clerk there about town history (gold mining, ghost town resurrected when Colorado government allowed gambling there and a few other places in Colorado in the 1970’s).

From there, we drove through the mountains and to a funky town, Nederland – from there, along the beautiful Boulder Creek, through Boulder Canyon to the city of Boulder. We parked and walked to the Pearl Street area, like Madison’s State Street but without the buses and delivery vans (no traffic at all). The day had turned HOT, and there were many people out – families and college students just back from the summer. We had lunch in a streetside Mexican café with awesome people watching, then walked to street, stopping for ice cream, and spending about an hour in a really cool bookshop!

We walked back to our car and drove to a park along Boulder Creek. When we’d driven by earlier, I saw people carrying inner-tubes up the path along the creek. We sat in the shade and watched people tubing past – quite entertaining!!

Back in the car, we drove about 40 minutes up windy mountain roads to Kort and Amy’s place – a beautiful spot of land along a little creek. They’d set up a stage for the concert, and we had about an hour to meet other folks and shop in Amy’s jewelry boutique (www.cowboys-sweetheart.com). We met some really interesting other M&M fans – most of whom were local to the area, or nearby Gold Hill, which sounds like an interesting place!! We’ve heard M&M perform about a dozen times, but there was nothing like hearing them in this environment! They had a talented young kid “open” for them, Piatt Pund. Kort said they met him when Kort’s sister was teaching Piatt the violin. He’s a super-talented multi-instrument playing young man – currently going to school in NYC – I have a feeling we’ll hear about him in the future.

It was a great evening, wrapping up about 8pm, so we said good-bye and headed to the Denver Airport. We stopped at the hotel and dropped our bags, then dropped off the rental car and took the rental car to the airport hoping to catch the hotel shuttle. That didn’t exactly work, so we gave up and took an Uber to the hotel about midnight. Great night’s sleep – easy travel home on Sunday, arriving home about 5pm.