From the standard route along Denny Creek

Ken and I were really hoping to get in a climb of Pyramid Peak before it got too cold and icy but unfortunately, it snowed hard in Denver a couple of days earlier so we figured it that wouldn’t make for good conditions on steep, exposed, 4th class terrain.  So, instead we opted to do Yale.  Yale was my second-to-last fourteener in the Sawatch Range.   I still have to do Mount of the Holy Cross as well (note:  not anymore), but we wanted to save that one for early summer so we’d have good views of the cross. 

Well, it turned out that there was hardly any snow up in the mountains this weekend.   In fact, I don’t think we crossed any snow on Yale this day.  We may have crossed a tiny foot long patch here and there on the summit, but the southern side of the peak was pretty much bare.  So, it was a great day for hiking in the mountains.

Ken and I arrived at the trailhead fairly late because, during this time of year, the weather is much more stable.  We were surprised at how many cars were at the trailhead.  It promised to be fairly crowded on the peak.
 
The trail up to Mount Yale is a virtual highway.  It’s in really good condition and is very wide.  After about a mile or a mile and a half, the trail splits.  Continuing straight leads to Brown’s pass.  A right-hand turn leads you to Mount Yale.  Though I imagine that most people go to Mount Yale, the trail is much smaller than the main trail.  It’s still in great shape though.

We moved into a several aspen groves and paused many times to take pictures of the scenery.

The route was quite interesting actually.  It seemed to wind in and out of small valleys and contoured around a lot.  The trail winds through aspen groves, evergreen groves, meadows, along steep slopes, back into forest, over creeks, back through meadows.  It’s not that long but the terrain seems to change a lot.  Before the turnoff to Mount Yale, the trail moves away from the mountain.  When you get on the Yale trail, it starts heading back.
 
The hike up to treeline seemed a lot longer than it actually was.  When we broke out of treeline, we realized that it would be pretty windy on the top.  The thin clouds were moving pretty quickly above the summit and the wind was starting to blow pretty hard around treeline.  The trail was consistently becoming steep.  A lot of it is eroded in sections and doesn’t contour or switchback.  I’d guess that this would be a good mountain for the 14ers initiative to visit.

We finally got views of the summit, although before we confirmed it on the map, we thought the spur jutting off to the south/southeast was the actual summit.

After a long uphill section, the trail levels out a bit before the final segment that consists of switchbacks to the high saddle on Mount Yale.  I nearly lost my hat on this section – a big gust of wind knocked it off.  But I was able to chase it down.

We started the switchbacks and made great time on this steep sections.  We passed a few parties on the way up.  We counted around, give-or-take a few, 15 people on the switchbacks.
 
The wind was really whipping over the saddle from the north.  It must have been blowing about 50 miles an hour.  We were able to lean really far into the wind.  If you relaxed your arms, the wind easily lifted them up.  From time to time, a strap on my backpack would whip around and smack me in the face.  Ken ditched his trekking poles, we put on some more clothing, and quickly headed up the final 200 feet of the summit.
 
It was kind of tricky hiking on the ridge.  The wind would occasionally blow you of the trail.  It’s a good thing we weren’t on Pyramid Peak this day!
 
We sat on top for about 20-30 minutes.  We had to take shelter behind some rocks in order to eat lunch without it all being blown away.  The views were very clear all around.

We both estimated a time that we would be home.  Ken predicted about 10 minutes earlier than I did and we arrived about 2 minutes before his prediction.  Not bad.

Mt. Yale was an enjoyable hike – a typical Sawatch fourteener

From the Mount Massive Trail

I had been looking forward to Mount Massive for a long time.  Mount Massive, as you can probably predict from the name, is a giant mountain.  It features a mile of terrain that is continually above 14,000 feet.  Don’t attempt a traverse of this mountain if you’re not acclimatized!

I wanted to do it by the standard route since it was long and very gentle.  It was a beautiful day for a hike.  I had taken the day off from work and began hiking fairly late, if I recall – around 9:30 am.  The first part of the hike uses the Colorado Trail.  The turnoff to Mount Massive is about 3 miles later, after two bridges over creeks, and is marked with a large sign – hard to miss!
 
After a quarter mile of steep hiking and another half mile, I broke out of treeline and had a great view of the rest of the route.  I didn’t bring my gaiters along and it turned out that I needed them.  The new snow (which would melt after a couple of days) was fairly deep and I constantly had to dig the snow out of my boots.  I eventually ran into a flock of several ptarmigans.  At one point, I was within 10 feet of five or six of them (left).
 
The hike up to the ridge was very long and, after finally arriving, I was surprised to see how thin the ridge was.  It was no knife edge, but it certainly wasn’t the standard wide ridge commonly seen on Sawatch fourteeners like Princeton and Antero.  About 15 minutes past a false summit, I finally arrived at the true summit. I called home and talked for a while but my battery was dying so I kept getting cut off.  Another climber arrived from the other side.  He had come up the steep slopes near Halfmoon lake.  He told me that he had started hiking at 8:00 am. So that goes to show you that long gentle slopes are sometimes much faster than short steep slopes.  He seemed really tired so I told him that if he wanted to hike down the other side, that I’d be glad to give him a ride to his car at the Halfmoon Lake trailhead.  I suggested that if he were ready that he go on ahead because I hiked out so fast.  On the way down, I did end up passing him, but that gave me time to do some stretches and collect a few rocks back at the trailhead.
 
I gave him a ride back to his station wagon.  I couldn’t believe he even attempted to get a car like that, let alone try, up that road.  The road was quite easy for a 4×4 but I wouldn’t think a regular 2-wheel drive car could ever make it up there.

The last time I’d been up this road was when I had climbed Mount Oklahoma.  Driving along brought back memories of how pretty it is deep in the Mount Massive wilderness.

I was glad to give the fella a ride to his car.  I can’t remember his name now, but I was happy to be able to do someone a favor – especially when they’re so tired.  I hope that someone would give me a ride if I ever really needed it.
 

From the Missouri Gulch trailhead.  Returning via Elkhead Pass

Ken and I were planning on climbing forboding Pyramid Peak this weekend but Ken began picking up flu-like symptoms on Thursday.  We were planning on leaving Friday night but he called and persuaded me to delay the trip for one day thinking he could perhaps recover.  Well, on Saturday I called him and he wasn’t any better.  So, after he asked me not to climb it without him, we decided to delay it for two weekends.  However, it was getting late in the season.  Two weekends away and it might be too icy or slick to climb.  We’d have to wait and see.  In the mean time I knew I wanted to do something but there didn’t seem to be too much to choose from.  I basically only had the Sawatch to choose from for driving reasons and I certainly was going to do a fourteener since I would be alone and I wanted to reach 40 fourteeners before the end of the year.  So, I realized that there was one peak that really stood out: Mount Oxford.  I’d missed Mount Oxford last year because of bad weather.  And this was the perfect opportunity.  I had thought in the past that I might climb it from Pine Creek but I wasn’t in the mood for a 20-mile overnight backpack so I decided to car-camp at the Missouri Gulch trailhead and hike it from the standard route.

I drove out late on Saturday evening and arrived around 10:30 pm.  The night was a little cooler than previous nights that I’d spent out in the mountains.  Fall was definitely on the way.   Because I left after dark, I didn’t see any mountains as I drove, however, when I awoke, I noticed that a dusting of snow had fallen high upon the peaks.  The first snow had arrived much earlier than last year.  I began up the trail around 7:30 am.  The trail starts switching back steeply.  I was expecting this though since I’d been here exactly 11 months ago.  I made great time though and I was out of treeline within a little over an hour and I noticed that Belford, again, had a good helping of snow on it.  It thankfully wasn’t nearly as deep as last year though and the weather was much better as well.  The wind wasn’t blowing nearly as hard.

I considered hiking up to Elkhead Pass but that seemed too far away so I started heading up Belford with the idea that I’d cut over at the last minute and head straight for Oxford.  Well, it didn’t work out quite that way.  I should have studied the map a little more.  I cut over but got onto some annoying talus and a little cliff band (yes, on Belford!) so I hiked up and around the cliff band and noticed that I was literally only 20 feet from the summit of Belford.  So, I decided to tag the summit, have some lunch, and then head off to Oxford.   If you climb Oxford from this route, you might as well plan on doing Belford as well.  The ridge is only 20 feet lower than the actual summit, which means that the ridge where you start the climb of Oxford from is higher than Oxford itself.

After chatting with some folks from out of state who were too pooped to continue on to Oxford, I set off.  I thought I might be able to be on top within an hour.  It actually took 15 minutes less.  Not bad at all.  The ridge from Belford drops steeply but the climb up to Oxford is very gentle indeed.

The summit of Oxford is very non-descript.  I think I may vote Oxford as probably the most bland summit I’ve been on yet.  However, the views were great.  I could see Leadville and many other fourteeners.  Mount Harvard was a giant bulk to the south.  Mount Elbert had much more snow on it than these peaks did too.  Out to the east I could make out the Buffalo Peaks.  I didn’t stay on top very long.   It was kind of cold when the wind blew so I kept hunkered down. I didn’t feel like putting on my pants though because I knew I’d be hot as soon as I got out of the wind and back into the hot sun.  I started back and then took another fairly long rest in the middle of the ridge back to Belford.  I decided not to go down the northwest slopes but instead hike south to Elkhead Pass then head back north up the Missouri Gulch trail and back to the car.

What a great idea it was to hike to Elkhead Pass!  This was definitely the highlight of the trip and I would recommend to anyone who is hiking Belford and Oxford to definitely hike via Elkhead Pass.   It’s maybe 2 miles more in distance but it’s much more gentle and it’s twenty times more beautiful.  This was one of the prettier spots in the Sawatch Range.  The tundra is so expansive and the mountains around you are quite dramatic.  Missouri Mountain (below) looks more like a Mount Sneffels from here.  I passed some people on horseback on the way up.  One of the horses was looking pretty tired and the rider was leading him.  This is a great spot for horseback riding.  I also passed some hikers who where heading to Belford and Oxford who had just come from Missouri.  They were in the middle of a charity climb where it seemed that they were hiking all of the fourteeners within a month or two.  They said that Oxford would be the fortieth in 3 weeks!  I told them that my knees wouldn’t let me do that.

Here’s a neat shot of Missouri Mountain from Elkhead Pass. From here, it was a very pleasant hike out to car.  The views of Missouri Mountain are astounding the whole way.  I zoomed out pretty fast and made it back before 3pm and ended up catching up with the guys I’d met on Belford who decided not to hike Oxford.   Overall, the hike was very enjoyable.  I would not have enjoyed it nearly as much if I had skipped Elkhead Pass.