Chief Mountain Trifecta

Chief Mountain

Yesterday was day 1 of my summer term of school.  As I sat there through my only class this week I could only think of getting in a nice hike before my other two classes start next week.  After class got out I sat there on the light rail and convinced myself that tomorrow would be a good time to get out since I’m only in one class right now.  I sent Brian a text to see if he wanted to get out and soon enough our plans developed.  Since I needed to be back for class in the early evening we decided on the Chief Trifecta; which includes Chief Mountain, Papoose Mountain and Squaw Mountain.  Another 7am meet-up time for the T-Rex lot was in the books.

Chief Mountain and Papoose Mountain

On my drive to meet up with Brian I couldn’t help but notice how shitty the weather was today.  The rain was in more of a monsoon down pour and I was thinking this was really going to suck.  Lucky for us as we headed up I-70 and made the Evergreen exit we were now above the downpour and saw spots of blue sky here and there.  Now back in January I had done a hike of only Chief Mountain, so the good news is I knew where the TH was.  Since we planned on doing the loop, Brian parked his car where the Squaw Mountain road comes out onto the highway.  This way we could do our 100yrds along the road at the beginning rather than the end of the day.  If you’re planning to hike just Chief Mountain there is a pull-out on the right side of the road just up the road from where the Squaw road connects with the main roadway.

Evans Group

Chief Mountain Trail is highly recommended by me.  This is a great trail for any beginner or even seasoned vets such as us.  You can easily hike to the summit and back to your car in 1-2hours depending on your pace.  We made good time making it up to the summit in about 45 minutes hiking at a leisure pace.  For most of the hike we were covered in a cloud, but as we hit tree line the blue sky came out to visit us for a while.  Eventually the views from the summit opened up around us and we got a nice shot of the Evans group.  With summit one down we were off to Papoose Mountain.

We took the unconventional approach, staying on the ridge line and bushwhacking through the trees.  The snow was soft in spots, so for now I would recommend just following the trail down back to the saddle then heading up the short vertical section to Papoose.  This is an odd summit, because you don’t know you’re on it unless you stop and take a minute to realize it.  The summit is surrounded by trees so it doesn’t stick out at all, so don’t blink!  That marks two down, one more to go, so off we went for Squaw.

Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout

Unless you want to drop down to the intermediate dirt road and take it around to the Squaw Mountain Road, you will be in for a bit of a bushwhack like we were.  It was much nicer than the walk down from Chief, but we still ran into patches of deep soft snow quite a bit.  We hit the road about 100yrds below the “redneck gun range”.  Once on the road it is a simple road hike to the Squaw Mountain Fire Lookout.  I was feeling good and got in a good rhythm and in no time at all found myself at the fire lookout.  The wind was blowing considerably harder than it had all day.  Lucky for us the clouds around were giving us good views so I snapped a few pictures and we were on our way.

The fire lookout was impressive and it alone is worth the short hike to see the cool stone work.  There are massive amounts of metamorphic rock, mostly Gneiss along the road and near Squaws summit that add an extra bonus to those Geologist nuts out there.  The walk back to the car was quick since we were on a nice hard packed road.  We didn’t see any wildlife other than about 15 elk crossing the road on our drive back, so that was disappointing.  One note is the road is under some heavy construction right now, so don’t expect to zip right up to the TH as fast as you normally can.  It was another nice hike, one I’d like to do in the summer with all the snow gone, so I will probably be back to this trip again and again.

Date: 5/29/2013

Starting Elevation:  10,646ft 

Chief Mountain Summit: 11,699ft

Papoose Mountain Summit:  11,178ft

Squaw Mountain Summit:  11,476ft

Total Gained Elevation: 1,784ft

Distance: 6.09 miles

Time: 2:45 moving, 0:35 stopped

Partners: Brian

Picture Link: http://s282.photobucket.com/user/nickkarl72/library/Chief%20Trifecta

Pegmatite Points Round Two

The Tanglewood of Tanglewood Trail

School is out for a week, Dad is in town, time to climb a mountain.  In January Brian and I headed up to the Pegmatite Points but the wind was so bad I was not totally convinced we made it to the high point.  In a way I felt I had some unfinished business to tend to, so I thought this would be a great hike to take my Dad on, while he was in town.

Large Boulders of the Points

This hike always starts out as Rosalie being the primary objective, but I always end up taking the easy way out by heading to the lower Pegmatite Points.  The starting TH is Deer Creek which is part of the Mount Evans Wilderness.  This is a easy accessible TH, good enough for any passenger car.  In the recent months I’ve had such misery post holing in the snow, I wanted to hike up a well-used area to make life a little easier for the both of us.

For the most part the trail wasn’t too bad.  From around 10,500ft on up it was heavily snow covered, but a good hard snow.  As long as you stay to the center of the trail there won’t be any issues.  I did the hike in trail runners, so my ankles got a little sore, but no heavy duty gear is needed right now.

Meridian Peak

The morning was frigid, but we soon warmed up on the hike up the creek.  By the time we cleared the trees we both had a good sweat rolling and I had already rolled my pant legs up.  I was pretty tired, since I haven’t been out and as active as I’d like to be so I decided on heading to the Points since they are over 1,000ft lower than Rosalie.

There was much more snow higher on the ridge then when I was up this way in January.  Lucky for me I knew how the ridge worked, so we were able to avoid deep snow and some of the large boulders.  The weather was very cooperative and the wind was basically non-existent…perfect!

Summit Beers with Evans Behind

As we made our way onto the summit a light snow started to fall.  The weather was still great so we sat there for a long lunch/beer break.  The views were great, Mount Evans looks very enticing while covered in snow.  I tried to take some recon pictures of summits yet to come and after about 30minutes we decided it was time to head back down.

We made good time coming down, with nothing exciting to report about.  At times the snow was coming down pretty good, but it felt good cooling us down.  It’s always fun to get out on a hike with my Dad, our next adventure this weekend will be Pikes Peak…via the Cog Railway!  I like lazy climbs too!

GPS Track

Date: 5/22/2013

Starting Elevation:  9,283ft 

Pegmatite Points Summit: 12,261ft

Total Gained Elevation: 2,440ft

Distance: 9.0 miles

Time: 5hr moving, 2hr stopped

Partners: Mark (Dad)

Picture Link: http://s282.photobucket.com/user/nickkarl72/library/Pegmatite%20Points%20May%202013

Midland Hill Anniversary Hike

Mount Princeton

In celebration of our 8^th anniversary Kristi and I decided to make a weekend trip to Buena Vista, Colorado.  The locals just refer to Buena Vista as BV so I will do the same.  BV is about a 2.5 hour drive from Denver, and it is a place Kristi had not previously been.  I have been over there twice while climbing Mount Princeton and Mount Yale.  We found a couple breweries to check out and made plans for a Saturday and Sunday in the BV area.

When we first arrived we pulled off of HWY 24 into a viewing location; I posted many of these pictures on FB, so a lot of these from the trip report will be re-runs.  While we were at the view point we found out some info on hiking and I decided Midland Hill would make for a nice morning hike for the next day. 

Somehow I had convinced Kristi to go on this hike.  I was glad but knew it would be tough for her since the vertical gain of 1,600ft was so high.  It was going to be a challenge but I was just happy to get her out hiking with me.

Shavano, Tabegauche, Antero all 14ers

We checked out of the hotel around 9ish and made our way to the Arkansas River where the trail started.  This was a really neat area, most likely dominated by rafters, kayakers and fisherman when the seasons are right.  There are a slew of trails and I didn’t have a good idea of the most direct trail so we just started heading up.

Mount Yale

The trail was well maintained so it made a good day for using my new trail runners.  I’d have to say they worked great; it’s nice not having those big heavy boots on my feet.  We soon found out the trail I selected was not the best of choices since it took us to the north.  After about 300ft of gain we hit a county road and had to make our way south on it to connect with trial 6032.  Not that big of a deal but it probably added a quarter mile to half mile to the overall mileage.

Me Enjoying the View

After crossing the county road the trail gets pretty vertical.  Midland Hill looms just above you for quite a while.  The switchbacks make quick work of the elevation and Kristi didn’t care for them too much.  We made our way up slowly, which gave me a good chance to take in the sights of the huge mountains all around us.  As we got near the saddle Kristi decided to stay there while I ran up to the summit.  And I actually did run, so I got in a hell of a trail run in today as well.

From the saddle I made the summit in 5-10minutes.  The view was one of the best I’ve had yet in Colorado.  There was a tall flag staff on the top, so I had to take a few pictures of it with the 14ers looming behind.  I made it a quick stop, just a minute or two then made my trail run back down to where Kristi was waiting.

As I sat and enjoyed my post-summit beer a couple other hikers made their way by.  Up till now those were the first people we ran into today.  This was a nice change from the crowds we get around Denver.  We made a slow descent with the slippery pebbles from the sand stone rocks, but made good time overall.

It was a fun trip for me, a harder trip for Kristi.  I was pleased to see her out of her comfort zone and look forward to getting her up on more mountains with me as we keep exploring Colorado together.

GPS Track

Date: 4/28/2013

Starting Elevation:  7,920ft 

Midland Hill Summit: 9,556ft

Total Gained Elevation: 1,636ft

Distance: 5.20 miles

Time: 2:33 moving, 1:01 stopped

Partners: Kristi

Picture Link: http://s282.photobucket.com/user/nickkarl72/slideshow/Midland%20Hill

Berrian Mountain

Berrian Mountain

I’m trying to get back into the mountains at least once a week during my last month of school.  Brian found a mountain close to home we could hike that wouldn’t be an all day expedition, so we set on Berrian Mountain for Friday.

TH off of Armadillo Trail Rd

Berrian is a low lying summit at 9,147ft.  This is the looming mountain over the town of Aspen Park off of Highway 285.  Meyer Ranch where one of my favorite close to town hikes of Legault Mountain is across the road, so this is an area we were both familiar with.  The only issue around here is, so much of the land is private and you have to be careful where you tramp.

Trail Near the Start

Brian did the research for the hike while I was in school this week and found a few trip reports, but they weren’t as detailed as we would have liked to see.  The hardest part was for us to find out where the TH was.  Berrian is partially in one of the Denver Mountain Parks, but this park was surrounded by private land.  I tried finding some info out online on the Denver Mountain Park website, but they did not even recognize this park as one in their system.  We decided to meet at the Meyer Ranch parking lot and go from there on Friday.

Our first attempt driving up Eagle Cliff Rd., turned out to be a private road so we made our way around to the west side off of County Road 73 that put us onto Armadillo Trail Rd.  My GPS showed a parking spot along the road so we followed till we arrived to the roughly two car pull out along the road.  I wasn’t sure this was it, so I walked across the street and saw what appeared to be an open trail with some DMP signs tacked onto a few trees.  This must be the TH we decided, so we put our packs on and hit the trail.

This area is heavily forested and there had recently been a trail crew to the area to clear all the fallen trees.  If I had a wood burning fire place I would have thought about sneaking off with a few logs.  The trail was easy to follow as it cuts along the side of some huge rock cliffs.  The trail was partially covered in snow in the lower reaches and we were wishing we packed our micro spikes so we wouldn’t slip around too much.  There was even a light snow, but I knew it shouldn’t take us much more than an hour to summit so I didn’t think too much of it.

Brian Climbing the Rocks

We approached an area just past a large meadow were the snow was thicker and there was a convergence of at least two trails.  We didn’t notice it on the ascent, but one trail the trees have a red paint and the other the trees have a blue paint.  We stayed on the trail leading to the South around the mountain and soon realized this was an “around the mountain” trail and not a summit trail.  The bushwhacking begun as we made some direct lines towards the main NW ridge.  We hit the trail again at least once where there must have been a switch back.  After about 50ft of hiking down this Brian chose the direct route again.

We made our way to the ridge line, which is hard to tell in the thickness of the trees.  I knew there was a rock opening based on my TOPO map, and I could see this through the trees so we made our way there.  There was some fun short class 3 rock to climb up and over, but all could be avoided as we found on our way down.  Once on top of the large rock outcroppings we dropped about 50ft to where the normal trail comes up and made our way along to the forested ridge to the summit.  The summit was socked in the trees which was a little disappointing, but not all mountains have great views in all directions.

Me and my Summit Beer

I brought up a Ninkasi Tricerahops, so we had a nice drink with our trail mix and Scooby snacks.  I attempted to find a few geocaches, but gave up figuring they were buried in the snow.  We hung out up there for quite a while since the sun was out and there was hardly any wind to bother us.  As we started descending we made our way back to where the large rocks were and found the trail heading around the NW.  The trail was slick with no traction; there was a nice ice layer just below the soft slush surface.  For the most part we were able to follow trail on the way down and found out where it crossed with our previous boot prints down low near the meadow area.

This is a nice and easy graded hike.  In the summer time I would like to come back so I can follow the “true trail” and see how this park is really laid out, since nothing is published about it.  When I come back I would probably call the rock outcroppings the summit, since it’s the only place with a full view of the Evans group.  I didn’t get any pictures of the mountains, so I guess you will have to go see for yourself.

GPS Track

Date: 4/13/2013

Starting Elevation:  8,200ft 

Berrian Mountain Summit: 9,147ft

Total Gained Elevation: 1,172ft

Distance: 4.08 miles

Time: 2:07 moving, 1:10 stopped

Partners: Brian

Picture Link: http://s282.photobucket.com/user/nickkarl72/library/Berrian%20Mountain