Monday, April 10, 2006

MOUNT ELBERT 8/21/70

MOUNT ELBERT 14,433'

Mountain........Mount Elbert
Elevation.........14,433
Rank...............1st
Range..............Sawatch Range
Trail length......7 miles
Elevation gain..4,600'
Difficulty..........*
Comments........Highest in Colorado


TRIP REPORT

8/21/70

The 1970 trip involved a lot of driving and moving from place to place. We got tired of setting up and taking down camp in the rain every day and took to sleeping in the car. Richard got to sleep on top of the equipment pile in the back seat, while I was crushed under the steering wheel in front.
We spent one night at 12,000' and woke up the next morning in the dark - the windows were covered with snow, blocking the sunlight. We managed to extricate ourselves and drove through some ghost towns, spending the next night parked precariously on a cliff on a narrow jeep road with a suitcase wedged under the rear wheels to keep us from rolling downhill.

The following morning we awoke in a beautiful basin (I have no idea where any of these places were), climbed a nearby hill and built a snowman on top. I was inexperienced with cameras at the time and rewound the film with the back of the camera open, so we lost our pictures of the snowman and Antero.

We drove to Leadville that evening and slept in the Safeway parking lot. The next morning we wanted to set up camp at the base of Mt. Elbert and then climb it the following day, but when we got to Halfmoon Campground around noon it was pouring rain. Out of boredom (or desperation, I forget which), we decided to start up Mt. Elbert. The following is a description of how not to climb a fourteener.

Starting at noon in the rain wearing sneakers we started up the trail, which for the first several miles winds around the base of the mountain. We decided to leave the trail and climb straight uphill until we found the summit. At about 12,500' with the clouds just above our heads, we found ourselves boxed into Box Creek's steep-sided cirque. We climbed up one side into the clouds and just out of sheer luck hit the main trail at the top of the wall.

We continued on to the summit, where we got fleeting glimpses through breaks in the clouds of the Twin Lakes in the valley below. We didn't stay long, and ran most of the way back down the trail, reaching our car just as it got dark (we didn't have flashlights).

We considered another night of car-camping with an attempt on Mt. Massive the next day, but we were soaked and missed our girlfriends so we drove all night and the next day and night back to Maryland.

After this trip, we both went through college, got jobs & wives, and with the exception of some local hiking and a trip or two to New Hampshire, didn't do much climbing for 13 years.

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