Colorado peak questions, condition requests and other info.
Forum rules
This is a mountaineering forum, so please keep your posts on-topic. Posts do not all have to be related to the 14ers but should at least be mountaineering-related.
Personal attacks and confrontational behavior will result in removal from the forum at the discretion of the administrators.
Do not use this forum to advertise, sell photos or other products or promote a commercial website.
Posts will be removed at the discretion of the site administrator or moderator(s), including: Troll posts, posts pushing political views or religious beliefs, and posts with the purpose of instigating conflict within the forum.
For more details, please see the Terms of Use you agreed to when joining the forum.
Congratulations Mike! It was an absolute blast to ski (and summit) your last 13er with you!!! I hope to ski other peaks with you in the future.
Cheers to the completion to one major list and on to more regional adventures.
Mike ready to ski on the summit
B344C555-5312-49C0-B176-5247E8F9FC46.jpeg (269.07 KiB) Viewed 1561 times
Mike skiing down his final 13er
A82C2011-BF9F-42B6-B51D-A9E3C63BE177.jpeg (244.19 KiB) Viewed 1561 times
Ascending to the summit
9CCF237F-658C-45A9-99F3-F08C62C22E8F.jpeg (196.45 KiB) Viewed 1561 times
"Auto racing, bull fighting, and mountain climbing are the only real sports ... all others are games." - Ernest Hemingway (or was it Barnaby Conrad?)
Your knees only get so many bumps in life, don't waste them on moguls!
“No athlete is truly tested until they’ve stared an injury in the face and come out on the other side stronger than ever” -anonymous
Way to go, Mike!!
This is an incredible accomplishment and way to finish in style with a ski descent.
"When I go out, I become more alive. I just love skiing. The gravitational pull. When you ski steep terrain... you can almost get a feeling of flying." -Doug Coombs
Thanks Everyone! Its great to read all of your comments, I am glad so many have enjoyed the TRs over the years and been inspired by the journey, but I also want to thank all of you or the TRs, the trailhead and condition updates, the posts. All of those are really helpful, not just to me but to everyone on the site. Even if its not a peak I was looking to climb, the trailhead info or conditions photos often helped with planning for something nearby.
Most of all to thank all the people I have been able to hike or ski these peaks with over the years and to our great crew from Sunday for coming out. It takes some patience to get a snow climb and ski descent in as good of condition as we did and we have been trying to get this together for a few weeks now. Between waiting on the road to open up enough to day trip it, and making sure the peak had good coverage and snow quality, it all aligned for us and turned out great. Unfortunately that meant a few people were not able to join us that really wanted to, but I know we will get out soon! Also a congrats to Kevin and Sarah for finishing the Elks with me on Sunday!
I saw lots of questions on this thread so I will try and answer them a best I can!
For one, I am not retiring and will continue to climb and ski 13ers for years to come. As far as what is next, I do not have any plans for the full 12er list as there is some private property I don't feel like dealing with there. I will probably top out elevation lists at the Highest 700, after that some private property starts to creep in. Mostly my lists will be focused on Wilderness area peaks, and it will be fun to explore things out of state such as ultras.
It took about 17 years, the first 13er was Peak 9 in the Tenmile on 6/5/2004 - about a month after I moved here from Chicago. Peak 10 was the same day. The final one was of course Star, which I actually tried to ski around this same time of year in 2015 but the June Couloir was not in, in fact our avy test pit was filling with graupel that was sliding down the couloir. It was easy to turn around that day and head back to the Friends Hut. Over the last couple of years I decided that I wanted to do something unique and special for the finish and was looking at what I had left that would make a good ski. Star was one of the candidates and given the stats and it seeming more group friendly than some of the options, it won out.
There are many favorites, mostly the ones with good solid scrambling, but of course ones that had good snow climbs or ski descents too. Hard to make a list. I'm a big fan of the Grand Traverse in the Gore, three trips with great friends all three times, twice with Valhalla added on and once with 12485 added on to maximize scrambling. Big fun days on high ridges in my home range. Not sure its truly my favorite, but its definitely one I would repeat any time. Least favorite is hard to pick too, there are a handful of awful scree slogs in the San Juans, but with snow they may be better, Mears comes to mind but may take the top spot because we had been turned around above a hard pan crux section with storms on a Saturday just to come back to get the summit the next day. That is a lot of scree slogging for one peak.
Probably the most memorable wouldn't so much be an individual peak as a whole trip, the first week long trip to the San Juans when Kevin, Sarah, Scot and Jamie and I all went in for Jagged and many of its neighbors. We split up the TR duties into a 3 parter for that one. Future multi-day Wemi backpacks rise high on that list as well, but something about that first 9 day trip totally disconnected from the world in a wild place will always be special.
As far as advice, mostly just be patient! There are 584 of these, so from a ranked standpoint, it 11 to 1 on the 53 ranked 14ers, it may take a month or 2 just to make that same kind of progress on the list you can get from a jaunt up Quandary. There are also many more backpack trips, more money to spend at Cielo Vista, and certainly more technical climbing, more scree slogging, and a whole lot of off trail route finding and bushwhacking. I have a friend to likes to say the Colorado Thirteener Initiative is lazy, there aren't many trails. You will also need to build confidence on loose rock, or gain the snow skills to avoid it, and get out and climb some technical rock. It will help with some of the scrambling too, but mainly to build confidence for the technical peaks. Especially Lizard Head, its a unique peak for Colorado's high country in that it requires some real climbing technique. The crux bulge took me 4 tries to get over and I was exhausted after that effort at 13k+, even after climbing all summer and feeling really good heading into it.
To anyone that wants to finish the 13ers, you can certainly do it! The list is big, but as you go along you celebrate those little milestones like finishing the peaks in a certain Wilderness, finishing in a range, finishing a certain elevation cut off. Of course the San Juans just take forever no matter what you do, 250 of them. Week long vacations are your friend!
Enjoy your journeys no matter what they are, I enjoyed mine and look forward to many more!
"We want the unpopular challenge. We want to test our intellect!" - Snapcase
"You are not what you own" - Fugazi
"Life's a mountain not a beach" - Fortune Cookie I got at lunch the other day
cottonmountaineering wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 11:38 am
Mike - for the 13ers were there any peaks which required landowner permission, aside from the cielo vista area?
Interesting question, there are the Cielo Vista peaks of course, and then 2 more ranked on a different owners' property to the north. In recent years people have been able to climb those with permission/logistics handled on the Cielo Vista side but I am not sure if that was coordinated with the neighboring property owner or not? Cielo Vista has been good to work with and I believe has continued to work with people under new ownership.
Additionally there are 3 peaks with no access allowed, the 2 peaks in the Boulder watershed closure on the east side of the IPW can be managed if you get creative. Bartlett by Fremont pass, which I climbed before Climax reopened, has active mining operations and has since been closed for safety.
There are certainly several random mining claims scattered about (Similar to 14ers like the Decalibron/Sherman) but I have never encountered any signage on those. I don't think they are popular enough for the old mining claim owners to treat in the way Bross is for example. Hopefully people continue to not trash them or sue for injuries and avoid them getting closed. Buckskin seems unaffected by the recent Bross drama as well. Mostly its the Mosquito and San Juan with the old mining history.
"We want the unpopular challenge. We want to test our intellect!" - Snapcase
"You are not what you own" - Fugazi
"Life's a mountain not a beach" - Fortune Cookie I got at lunch the other day
Chicago Transplant wrote: ↑Tue May 18, 2021 9:26 am
I saw lots of questions on this thread so I will try and answer them a best I can...
...Future multi-day Wemi backpacks rise high on that list as well, but something about that first 9 day trip totally disconnected from the world in a wild place will always be special.
Thank you for sharing all of that and yes, everyone should try disconnecting for a week or longer every now and then. Really puts things in perspective back at home!
