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An over night trip for 3 Hashers: Me (AKA: Unfuckable), Michelle (AKA: Roachmotel) and Chris, (AKA: Rear Ejection). My first time to Mt. Lindsey. The other two had previously been turned around by weather just before the Northwest ridge route begins.
We started hiking from the Huerfano/Lily Lake Trailhead just prior to 7:30 p.m. We started late due to spending the day hiking around Walsenburg scouting trail possibilities in preparation for a big cross country running club event on Labor day weekend.
We took some time to snap a few pics from the trailhead, and took of. We planned to camp around tree line at about 12,000 ft. We hiked pretty quick, not taking any real breaks due to the waning sunlight. We reached the 12,000' basin shortly after we had resorted to using headlamps. We fanned out looking for the best place to plant two tents, found it, and settled in for the night. We would re-locate the trail in the morning. It was a moonless night, perfect for some star gazing before bed.
Morning time. 8 hours of sleep following having been awake for nearly 30 hours the day prior.
A picturesque setting. I was able to quickly relocate the trail. My tent was straddling it. Oops. Oh well. There was also a small rocky pool aboiut 30 feet from the tents. More about that later.
Time for breakfast and time to get moving. We weren't in a terrible hurry. Not with our 12,000' campsite. One hiker passed by. He had been camped about 75 yards below us. We must have walked closer than 30 feet from his tent during the night and not know. He said he had heard us hiking by.
ZERO clouds at all. We started hiking around 8:15 a.m., making good time across the basin, up to the top of the saddle.
We were greeted with a view of a rocky ridge that leads us to the Northwest ridge route to the summit. We planned to ascend the Northwest ridge and descend the face. On our way up, we stayed on the trail a hundred feet or so to far so we took a hard right up to the ridge route. We stayed pretty much on the ridge edge after that.
I seemed to be the quickest on the rock so I led the route. I was able to steer the others around any bad lines I took/saw. I found myself on top of the first of the three small rocky spires just below the class IV crux. After steering the others to the left, and scouting a doable route, I climbed over the 1st spire, around the right side of the second spire and across the left of the third. I worked my way up the crux wall, decided the left side looked better. Crossed over and plopped myself on a stable rock to take a pic of the others directly below me.
They plan to buy helmets soon. I was glad to have mine.
As they neared my position, I looked for a less vertical path farther to the left. I loosed a small slab rock: 1-inch thick, 5-inch by 10-inch. I yelled ROCK! I knew it's trajectory wasn't putting our group in danger, but damn, but we had seen others in the basin near our campsite earlier in the day. I hoped they were not down there.
The rock broke apart and became a spreading, splintering mess of small caliber rocky hail-fire into the face/gully route. A not-so-happy call from below answered my yell after the small shower stopped.
I felt terrible. I immediately returned to my higher right-side route that had proved to be much more solid. No more rocks slid off the mountain after that. After negotiating the crux, we made short order to the top of the highest point. On my way up, I passed the guy that had camped near us on his way down. Well, this high point proved to be a false summit.
The true summit lay beyond one last small rocky ridge. A good trail across and up to the usual semi-circle rock wall and summit register at the peak. No USGS benchmark would be found.
We were soon joined by the couple who had climbed up the face. They were fine. I apologized profusely. They tried to put me at ease with their story of how they themselves had loosed a microwave-sized rock on another mountain on another day and not to worry about today. I still felt bad, and lucky that no one had been hurt.
The series of fluffy clouds had formed around the horizon and a couple slightly closer.
Here I am modeling a 14ers.com shirt at the summit.
We started our descent down the face route. Yeah, this is a loose mess of sand and stone, but staying on the left side (while looking down) during the decent kept us on pretty solid rock and out of the lowest part of the gully, just in case a rock crashed down.
Chris and Michelle can be seen just above/left of the center of the photo if you look real close.
Our campsite is across the basin and up top a small rocky shelf.
It only took us 90 minutes to get back to our camp. Remember that rocky pool I mentioned earlier? Time to soak our weary feet in some nice cool mountain water.
After breaking camp, we were headed down.
In the light of day, I was able to see the mine shaft that had been bored directly into the cliff, not too far below the creek crossing. We arrived to the car 90-minutes after we left our campsite. A great day on the mountain.
#27--check!
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
downclimb of the gully was pretty quick and easy but loose, (however no stones were rolled during the descent). Michelle decided that although her climb up the ridge went fine, and without a hitch, she stated that she had been above her comfort level. Also, it had already been pre-determined to take the gully down. No real reason, just because. Besides, I‘m always up for becoming familiar first-hand with a 2nd trail option. And I usually like speedy descents.
*Hope we didn‘t mess up your sleep with our night time arrival.
Good report Ed. Love the pics, they turned out well! We‘ll have to send you our shots from the crux wall looking up at you
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