Im usually accused of being a little overly optimistic and this may be one of those times. Or at least that was what I was thinking as I dragged myself up Democrat at about 11 AM in the footsteps of Scott. OK, two 14ers down, 2 left to go. Sounds like a newbie on the DeCaLiBro? Well.... not really. The first 14er of the day was Sherman with Buckskin thrown in for good measure and about 14 miles of skiing under our belts at this point. Yep, we were draggin a little. 2 down, 2 "official" 14ers left to go. And we werent taking the easy way as we dropped down to Kite Lake enroute to Bross.

Welcome to the fun factory of the SheDBroLinc (up). Im not sure if anyone else has done this but the idea kind of bubbled up in my few functioning brain cells over the past month. With the great snow cover from this year linking all "official" 14ers in the Mosquitos should be pretty doable- right? Lots of Google Earthing, CalTopoing, and even a custom MyTopo were in order as the area in between the peaks is not well depicted on any map. Obviously a spring mission for snow safety. Best to travel South to North for the same reason, reducing travel on sunhit slopes to a minimum. The big question was how to efficiently travel from Sherman to Democrat. The rest is pretty obvious. I settled on a general line from Sherman to Gemini, then aiming for the pass on the West side of Loudon. From there we would just have to scope out the long ridge up to Buckskin and figure out what looked best for surmounting it and getting Democrat in our sights. I was also not sure what would make sense on Democrat and was worried we may have to skirt it to ascend a Northerly aspect which would add some effort.

A little uncertainty always adds to the adventure so I was overall pretty psyched. To add to the psyche, I had 2 great partners for this little adventure. Scott is an unstoppable machine on light weight gear and Im always humbled that he will agree to go do stuff with someone as mediocre as me. Chris is a great guy who helps teach mountaineering and guide.

Because of the distance and elevation we planned to do this on skimo-style ski setups, crampons, and either an ice axe or whippet since we had no idea what we would encounter. We also planned to carry enough water for the whole effort since we assumed anything not frozen might be below a mine and require filtering. Light is right!

With the route questions in my head, a decent plan and a weather window we were ready. The night prior we dropped a shuttle at Mongomery Reservoir and in the morning everyone linked up at 3:30 and headed to the 4 Mile TH for Sherman.

It was pretty windy but not terribly cold given the intensity of the wind. We sure were not talking though! As we closed in on Sherman we decided to head generally straight up the East face towards the summit to stay off the ridge and out of the wind as much as possible.

Cresting the ridge we were rewarded with confirmation that staying out of the wind was a great idea. It sucked too bad to take a picture on the summit! We didnt even take skins off or lock in as we dropped off the summit towards the twin rocky mounds of Gemini. We skirted the Easternmost bulge on its right via a snow covered shoulder which led to decent mildly wind crusted turns down into the large flattish area we would take to the clearly visible saddle on the West side of Loudon.

We skated a lot and made the intermediate little saddle without skins and kept going until we were fairly close to the Western Loudon saddle before skinning up. Here was our first big decision. From the saddle we realized the main valley had a lot more relief that we anticipated. Also, looking up at that long ridge off of the SE aspect of Buckskin (Loveland Mtn?) it looked like it would be really windy and have some unnecessary elevation loss if you ran the ridge. Plus, there was limited snow cover on top. The best plan seemed to be sidehilling/contouring towards the headwall at the upper end of the valley, ascending a snowfield to where the ridge from Tweto first starts to climb towards Buckskin, and work our way up that ridge to the summit of Buckskin. It worked out beautifully. The terrain was interesting and with crampons not sketchy. The snow got pretty crusty in places and it felt like brutal early April snowpack posthole fest in places. But we made it. Thanks in large part to Scott. Again! What a nice summit! Definitely recommended.

From the top of Buckskin we had great view of our second big question. How to ascend Democrat. The South face has a pretty steep section about half way down and it was starting to get warm with serious sunhit. However, we decided to try the couloir on far lookers left of the face and then take the ridge above to the summit. With that plan we dropped in. Once again, some wind crust, this time on tired legs, but doable. We had to skirt another small basin, boot up a small shoulder, and then got in some powder turns which started getting wet towards the bottom. Then it was over and up the couloir with some tight steep kick turns and a little booting. Back to skinning on the upper ridge and then the summit. I wont lie, I was tired and while our original plan was to drop to Kite Lake and ascend Bross, I was eyeing the ridge to Cameron a little. We decided we had another ascent in us though so dropped off the NE aspect of Democrat through some slightly more challenging wind crust aiming for the left of the two gullies up Bross. Man that descent was long on tired legs!

That gully on Bross was a perfect angle for skinning and we straight lined it up to pretty close to the top where it got just a tad too steep. A little booting took us to the summit and a look at the end of our link up! We were pretty beat and just wrote off tagging Cameron. Low on water, about 10 hours into this, dont judge!

The snow on Bross was terrible and we were lucky to get to the Bross-Cameron saddle with only a few short walks. From there we contoured around Cameron on skis and then skied and booted up Lincoln.

For the final descent I had my eye on the big couloir dropping North from about the summit. All I had to go on was what it looked like on Google Earth as I could find no mention of people skiing it other than Chris Davenport stating they may be good in the right conditions. There looked like there was a cliff at the bottom but a possible work around on skier's left. The left side of the feature was packed with snow and when I posed the question Scott claimed we should gamble with the unknown so down we went!

Just as we hit the cliff right above the apron the snow went isothermic. Not a bad run of it really! We skirted the small cliff on skiers left and then descended the apron to the drainage where we slogged out in that isothermic snow to the car.

In total the trip on various devices was just under 12 hours, around 20 miles, and probably a little under 10,000 feet of climbing. Beautiful scenery, fun and not too difficult route finding, and a lot of vert. A pretty fun excursion if you feel up for a little challenge!