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Peak(s):  Mt. Blue Sky  -  14,268 feet
Date Posted:  07/31/2006
Date Climbed:   07/30/2006
Author:  Jintoh36
 West Ridge via Chicago Creek   

Started out from Aurora @ 0300hrs and met a friend at the Ward exit at 0400hrs.

Started out from Echo Lake at 0500 (I think). We would have started from Guanella Pass but I didn‘t want to take the chance of the road being closed.

We only had to use the headlamps 1/2 way down the switchbacks to the road to the reservoir. A shot during the early morning ours between the Reservoir and Chicago Lakes
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. There was some wet/mucky spots to crossover but they weren‘t a problem (my friend wore tennies which I poked fun at the whole time, and worries some about getting through the wet spots). He did well in them though until the last few miles when he started to regret the lack of ankle and sole support.

The trail is obvious all the way up past the Chicago Lakes
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. The Inititive was on the trail up to Summit Lake working on the trail, and I thank them for it.

We took the path via Mt. Spalding, a view from Spalding of Chicago
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. This was the hardest part of the trip, its farely easy to loose the trail if your not paying attention, but easy to pick back up with the cairns. Although, there was one cairn near the Spalding peak that did not go anywhere other then to the very edge of a good size dropoff.

Now, I wanted to do this round trip. On the way up we met a group of ~20 cooperate folks from Minnesota doing a team building exercise who offered us a ride back down as they had large capacity vans at top.

I, though new to the 14ers adventure, had a problem with this; I didn‘t think It counted if I didn‘t go up and down. My friend though had other ideas.

I do have to admit, by the summit I was glad for the ride back down. The 4500ft elevation gain made it ok in my head. I do want to do the hike again round trip when I get in a little better shape for it.

Summit Lake from the top
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.
Total trip time to top 7.4hrs.



Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
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