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Day 13: Lucky Number 13
The morning plan was to hike Mount Flora with Josh and Meredith, but Josh's daughter wasn't feeling too well. In a spur of the moment decision, we consulted with our Indian Peaks book and chose Parry and Bancroft. The road up to the trailhead at Fall River Reservoir was rougher than expected and I dinged up the bottom of my car a bit. Such is life.
I use the word “trailhead” loosely, because there really isn't an established trail. The entire hike is a bushwhack/herd path of sorts. We simply followed our own intuition for much of the way there, but it wasn't too difficult.
We walked up to the reservoir and began by circumnavigating the reservoir on the right side. From here, we basically followed the contour lines by using my GPS watch, passing along a beautiful waterfall along the way.
From t..
Buy my new novel Take to the Unscathed Road now! Follow me at facebook.com/justinraphaelsonauthor, instagram.com/jraphaelson, and twitter.com/jcxc44!
Day 13: Lucky Number 13
The morning plan was to hike Mount Flora with Josh and Meredith, but Josh's daughter wasn't feeling too well. In a spur of the moment decision, we consulted with our Indian Peaks book and chose Parry and Bancroft. The road up to the trailhead at Fall River Reservoir was rougher than expected and I dinged up the bottom of my car a bit. Such is life.
I use the word "trailhead" loosely, because there really isn't an established trail. The entire hike is a bushwhack/herd path of sorts. We simply followed our own intuition for much of the way there, but it wasn't too difficult.
We walked up to the reservoir and began by circumnavigating the reservoir on the right side. From here, we basically followed the contour lines by using my GPS watch, passing along a beautiful waterfall along the way.
From the waterfall, we looked back on our progress toward the reservoir.
Smiles were aplenty when we made it into the enormous valley overlooking the mountains. We weren't exactly sure what we would run into when we took our errant path past the waterfall, but we were pleasantly surprised. We could even see a faint trail in the distance that we would ascend up to the saddle between the two peaks.
We made our way up the path toward the saddle. It was eroded and rocky, very much not a trail, but more of a herd path. It was our first day at altitude, so it kicked our butt.
But the views were well worth it!
We made our way up to the summit of Parry to the left of the saddle where we looked down on many of the beautiful Indian Peaks.
And then from there, up to Bancroft. To get there, we headed back toward the saddle and continued going forward. The clouds were starting to roll in, so we didn't spend too much time up here. We only saw a handful of people all day and none on the route we took!
We cut right from the summit and essentially just followed the wide open grassy field trending back toward the reservoir, which we could see almost the entire time. Using the help of my GPS watch, this was effortless.
Lauren celebrated by taking a dip back in the reservoir.
We drove back the way we came and out to the road, destination: FOOD! We made our way to Frisco toward our next objective. We planned to meet Bridget at the Mount of the Holy Cross trailhead (Half Moon) where we intended to camp that night for a morning assault on Notch Mountain. But before that, we got some delicious Mexican food in town! That night, we met up with Bridget just before the trailhead and found ourselves a nice pull off to camp at! We shared stories with Bridget who we hadn't seen in a few years and quickly went to bed for an early wake up.
Day 14: Holy, Holy Cross
We got an early start from our campsite and made the short drive to the trailhead proper for a 6:45 AM start. This was me and Lauren's third time at the Half Moon Trailhead–the first, a failure on Holy Cross after getting sick, the second, success on Holy Cross. And now, our third, an ascent of neighboring Notch Mountain, which is said to have one of the best summit views in the area. They were right.
Notch Mountain starts the same as if you were hiking Holy Cross, heading up Trail 2009 from the parking lot. It follows easy switchbacks up to the height of land where you would usually drop down toward Mount of the Holy Cross. Instead, there is actually a well worn herd path that heads up toward Notch Mountain.
When we went, someone even spelled out Notch with little pebbles!
There is actually a trail on many GPS maps that goes all the way to the summit of Notch. However, we opted to blaze our own path, getting the majority of the elevation gain out of the way. We followed the path of least resistance trending in the direction toward the summit.
There were some loose rocks here and there, but for the most part this was a benign way to do it. We soon thereafter got our first views of Mount of the Holy Cross, and were blown away.
We followed the ridgeline up toward the summit, eventually meeting back up with the herd path that we had lost earlier. It was quite easy to figure out where to go from here.
The summit was lovely, and we snacked for a bit before deciding our next step. This is where the fun would begin.
We had decided earlier that we would make a decision based on weather and time as to whether we would continue along the ridge to UN 13,248, an unnamed peak that is home to the infamous shelter that overlooks the namesake cross on Holy Cross. With optimal conditions, we began our descent of the ridge, which was likely the sketchiest part of the day.
We stuck along the ridge proper until we more or less reached the saddle between the peaks. From here I thought it made sense to go right, but Bridget and Lauren rightly pointed out that going left was the right call. This was a very exposed area, and even as we trended to the left there was some exposure to our left in the form of steep gullies.
After we passed the exposure, we cut right, and then made our way into the open boulder field under the so called "Horse's Head". It's quite an amazing feature, one that I would have considered climbing but for the enormous mountain goat standing directly in our path!
It's a class 4 feature with quite a bit of exposure–doable, but the group decided it would be safer given the circumstances to just follow along the base of the cliffs on the class 2+ section. I believe we made the right decision, and it was still a fun route!
It really was a beautiful route, and we got some creative scrambling as we reached the high point of the cliffs before we had to cut left and up toward the summit proper.
The best view of the day was from the summit of this unnamed peak, but we still had a little ways to go to get to the shelter. It was a short traverse away from us, and would make our descent a lot easier!
At the shelter we ran into almost a dozen people who hiked up just to see the view of Holy Cross. More were on their way up as we made our descent down toward the Fall Creek Trail. This trail was quite scenic but also a huge annoyance, as it was a long series of switchbacks.
We could see the Horse's Head as we headed down as well.
Though the trail was easy to follow, it felt much longer than expected due to the switchbacks. But it definitely beat retracing our steps over the ridge!
When we finished our day, we drove toward Salida and saw the notch in Notch Mountain. It was really cool to see where we had been just a few hours prior. Notch Mountain was an incredible journey which was even more worth it by doing the loop over UN 13248!
We celebrated our experience by getting pizza in Leadville at High Mountain Pizza. Highly recommend the shrimp, jalapeno, bbq sauce and bacon pizza!!
We closed out the day at Bridget and her boyfriend Craig's house, where I met up with my old pal Sabrina from many road trips past!
Day 15: Tab, Shav, N' Trivia
It was another early start in the hills for our planned ascent of Shavano and Tabeguache. At around 11 miles and 5600 cumulative elevation gain, it's a pretty big day. The mileage feels a lot longer due to the 1000 feet per mile average one way, and the fact that you have to resummit Shavano on the way back with no ability to hike around it (unless you want to get yourself into some sketchy rockfall areas.
We began our day at the Shav/Tab trailhead which hikes along the Colorado Trail for a bit. This section of trail is beautiful, and didn't really prepare us for the next few miles of junk.
Once we made the turn headed up toward the mountains, the trail became rocky and eroded. We hear a rumor that this trail is being rerouted and may have already had some parts rerouted, but I can't confirm.
The climb up to treeline was steep and steady, and once we broke treeline we were in high spirits as we looked at our next step from the saddle of Shavano.
The climb up wasn't that remarkable and the scenery was so-so for a 14er. It certainly wasn't our favorite 14er.
The trek over to Tab wasn't too exciting either, and felt like one long slog. The ridgeline was kind of cool, but knowing we had to do it again on the way back made it less enjoyable.
The summit of Tab was also a bit unimpressive to us given that we had just been on Notch Mountain the day before looking toward Mount of the Holy Cross. But at least we had clear views!
The hike back was rough and longer than expected. We took a well worn shortcut that bypassed the rock hopping though to get down Shavano, which was nice.
Overall, the journey up Shavano and Tabeguache was enjoyable enough, but a long and arduous day for two middling 14ers.
After tagging two more 14ers, we made our way back to Salida to hang out with Bridget and Craig before heading over to a local brewery to play trivia with them and some of their friends.
There was Anderson, Cecil, and their other friend whose name escapes me but she's an OB/GYN. Anderson is a lawyer who told us stories about fishing in Alaska and how he's traveled all over the world and lived in a lot of places. I munched on a green chili burger and truffle fries, because of course I did.
We headed back to Bridget and Craig's, said buh bye to the pups, and got to bed early again for our last set of 14ers on the trip.
Day 16: Misbehavior
For our last hurrah, Lauren and I got up early once again so we could dodge some morning t-storms coming in in the afternoon. Our plan for the day was Decalibron, one of the most popular 14er hikes in Colorado. It includes Democrat, Cameron, Lincoln, and Bross–3 official 14ers and one unofficial. These peaks had just reopened due to some landowner issues. People obviously do not abide by rules which led to the initial closure. We would learn firsthand on this journey why people can't have nice things.
The first sign we saw at the trailhead said that Mount Bross is closed. We had read online of its status, so we knew going in that we would only be able to get just below the summit. That was fine with us. We still counted the summit toward our 14er list.
But before we got there, we took the left path, heading up Democrat first. This trail was steep, eroded, and rocky, but it went by pretty fast now that we were seriously acclimatized after 3 days at altitude.
Like the day before on Shav and Tab, these peaks are not the most impressive of the Rockies, but they are still aesthetically pleasing, especially looking over to the other peaks from the summit of Democrat.
We saw a sign atop the mountain and some lady was nice enough to snap a photo of us.
Next, we made our way over to Cameron, which is the "non official" 14er because its saddle does not drop low enough between it and Lincoln.
The trail over was quite easy, and the summit is just a big plateau area.
The nicest part of the day was the stretch between Cameron and Lincoln, which is a huge alpine field with not a plant in sight. The alpine habitat is harsh.
We scrambled to the summit on more easy terrain and soaked in the views of what we had done and what we had left.
Heading over to Bross was similar to going to Lincoln, insofar as we could see the mountain in front of us the entire way. Unfortunately as we approached the sign that says the trail is closed, a pair of people ignored it and went up to the summit. It's privately owned, so the fact that the landowners even let us on the trail in the first place is a blessing. But people will be people.
The descent was super steep, rocky, and the footing was loose. But we were able to get back to the car in no time at all!
Because we went during the week, we weren't subject to the insane weekend crowds, but these are still very crowded mountains!
From our last 14er adventure of the trip, we headed into Fairplay on our way back to the Greater Denver area and grabbed a burrito at a hole in the wall coffee shop called Java Moose. Smothered burritos after hiking=the best. We dipped our feet in a river nearby on our drive, picked up some donuts at Voodoo (my road trip staple), and then headed up to Longmont to a park and to visit our friend Monica and her boyfriend Chris. They just bought a beautiful house and we sat outside in their backyard before heading out to get some Thai food at Malee Thai.
Monica told us an elaborate story about a radio host that interviewed her Mom after a lady concocted a story about her stealing her house. It was some made for TV shit and we loved every minute of it, so we listened to the radio show on the way up to Fort Collins to hang out with and stay with our friend Dan, who had just moved up there from Massachusetts. Unfortunately we didn't have a whole lot of time to hang out as it was getting late, but we slept off our difficult last few days to prepare for our first of several drives back east.
