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| Massive SW, Elbert standard rt |
We took the SW slopes route up Massive based on the directions to the TH we found on 14ers.com. Just to be clear-the 2-ish miles past the Mt Massive parking lot are ROUGH road; it's stated as such but some parts were really bad. The last .5 up to the parking area is the worst. We were in a large truck with a lot of clearance and 4WD and it was still pretty crazy. The TH is marked as Half Moon. We had no trouble at all finding the trail and never lost it. There's still snow but none really in proximity to the trail. For squeezing all the elevation gain into 4ish miles, it really wasn't that miserably steep anywhere. The whole thing took us less than 7 hours. When we reached the summit we all were surprised- this is the summit already?! Very fun hike. The descent was rough on the knees and ankles with all the rocks. A lot of water access via small streams to keep dogs happy.
Standard route of Elbert from the Elbert parking area and TH. This parking lot fills up fast! The biggest problem with this route is at the very beginning, you come to an intersection and the sign is very unclear and doesn't mention Mt. Elbert at all. It's a very new looking sign, and it clearly labels CO trail and continental divide...and not which way the Mt. Elbert TH is (we did NOT bring the route instructions for this hike with us, since we were taking the standard route which is a very popular hike we thought it would be obvious). After looking at each other for a few minutes and trying to bring up 14ers.com (no service) on our phones, we were about to head back to the parking area to see if there was a map on the sign when we realized that someone had scratched an arrow and ELB into the sign. So make sure you know-it is a LEFT at the intersection  This hike seemed both steeper in general but also more prolonged steepness in the ascent than Massive did (altho I believe elev gain is very close). Our GPS watch revealed 10 miles round trip and we were on trail for the whole hike. Despite the steepness, we burned up pretty quickly, and the descent was fast-rough on the knees with the steepness but much less rocky than Massive so just straightforward downhill), did the whole thing in 5:45. Note that there's a lot of water early in the hike, but not at all later, and the route is VERY exposed so dog owners will want to carry a lot of extra water.
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