I have often said that as smart as I like to think I am, I've never actually made "the judgement call" on a 14er. There have been plenty of times that I should have (very dangerous lightning storm on Pikes, injury on Castle, snowstorm on Quandry), but I've always been too stubborn to actually abandon my plans. I don't think this is a virtue, and I've been thinking for a while that I should probably start working on that.
I had heard that heading over to Tab from Shav is a commitment, and that you should be pretty confident in the weather before making the attempt because there isn't a quick way to get down if something goes wrong. As I drove down to the trailhead with my hiking buddy (it was only his 2nd 14er) we discussed this at length, and how we were going to be responsible adults on this trip and make the call if we need to.
I'm not an especially fast hiker (I can go all day, but I'm not going that fast), so I like to start early. We drove down from Denver Friday night and camped at the trailhead for a few restless hours, awaking all too soon for our 3:30am alarm. We were on the trail by 4:10am.
Despite the general misery involved with doing anything at 4:10am, we really enjoyed the trail. It was well designed and a great pitch. We were steadily gaining vertical, but slowing enough so that we weren't burning ourselves out. We both commented on how the trail seemed a lot more mellow than we expected. I had been worried about finding the trail in the dark through the trees (previous trip reports had mentioned there were a couple tricky spots), but we had no problem at all. We did run into a guy who said he had gone 15 minutes in the wrong direction, but we had no issue finding the trail in our dark, sleep-deprived state.
A lot of this trail was in the trees, and it did start to feel like we were never going to reach treeline. Once we did, the wind started picking up. This was ok at first, we were both prepared for the cold (I've been caught on 14ers without layers before, never again!), but the wind quickly started bringing LOTS of clouds with it, which was worrying us. The clouds just looked like mist whipping across the peak and saddle, so we decided to go on.
We made the steady climb up to the saddle, with zero views in any direction. It's always depressing to miss out on views on a 14er, but this ended up being especially heartbreaking because we couldn't actually see the summit to our right (due to the very fast moving clouds), which lead us to believe it was MUCH closer than it was. I had been tracking our distance, and I was pretty confident we had no more than 1/4 mile to go (turned out to be 1/3, but who's counting?) and we thought we could make that push pretty quickly. That assumption was naive, because that last push to the summit was both very steep and VERY windy. The windy was so loud that we couldn't really talk to each other, we just had to put our heads down and go. Some hikers on the way down asked us how long it took us to do the piece from the saddle, and we concluded we actually have no idea. It was probably 30-40 minutes, but it felt more like an hour and a half.
As we got closer to the top, the question on everyone's lips became if Tab was a practical choice for the day. Every group was asking the others if they were planning to do it, as though crowd sourcing mountaineering choices has become the norm. Everyone we talked to said they weren't doing it, and the few groups heading down said they had abandoned the cause. You just couldn't see what was behind these horrible, cold, fast-moving clouds. Once on the top (8:40am), we chatted and ate some snacks for thirty minutes or so waiting for a window to get a glimpse. Everyone appeared to have the same idea - find out what's behind those clouds before you make the decision. We did eventually get a quick look, and it didn't look great. After 30 minutes of waiting up there in the freezing cold wind (our cheap-o keychain thermometers said high 20's), we made the call.
Turning around without getting Tab was depressing, and we spent most of the decent talking about when we could come back to get it. LOTS of people were heading up on our way down, many of whom were looking for even the slightest bit of encouragement in the face of the whipping wind. We gave as much info as we could, but it's hard to tell what the wind will do. Several groups we talked to were turning around.
Like almost all 14ers, once we lost some elevation and moved down into the trees we warmed up quickly and were down to t-shirts and shorts in no time. I'm always amazed at how cold I am on the top, and how incredibly hot I am on the way down. Our time wasn't as good on the way down as we had hoped, due to some knee issues. Somehow the trail actually felt steeper on the way down than on the way up!
The last mile or so began to test our patience, which I find always happens when you start something so early. The piece that you do in the dark feels like it never happened, so when you're going back down it, it feels infinitely longer than it did that morning. We were pretty happy when we finally got back to the trail junctions, indicating that were were almost to the car (and the nice cold beer in the cooler!).
All in all, I'm happy we made the call. It proved to ourselves that we could make the hard choice when needed. In hindsight, we probably could have done Tab that day, but we made the best choice we could with the information we had at the time. We're already working on plans to return next year.
Start time: 4:10am
Summit: 8:40am
Left Summit: 9:10am
Back to car: 12:20pm
Total: 8hrs 15min and 8.7 mi (according to my GPS)
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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