Mt. Bross Trip Report 07/27/2015

Notice: This report has been DELETED by the author.

Peak(s):	Mt. Bross - 14,178 feet Mt. Democrat - 14,154 feet Mt. Lincoln - 14,293 feet Mt. Cameron - 14,248 feet
Date Posted:	07/27/2015
Modified:	07/28/2015
Date Climbed:	07/26/2015
Author:	AppalachianAdam

14er treble
My day started at 3am and departed towards Alma excited to bag three 14ers in one day. Upon arrival around 5am, I did one last gear and mental check and around 5:15 set off following a sea of headlamps near the Kite lake. I'll point out here that if I were to do this hike again, I'd start the climb an hour earlier. I was blown away by how many people were all ready there. Either way, at that point, I was just a little tiny light in a vast sea of darkness. I was damn near two hours into the hike before I realized I was ascending Mt. Bross, doing the treble of peaks counter-clockwise. In retrospect, that was a better deal than starting with Mt. Democrat and going clockwise--the grade on Bross was much greater than I imagined and coming down looked steep, without a lot of traction to slow you down. Around 6:30 I arrived on the summit of Mt. Bross and it was incredible. The summit is the biggest, flattest 14er I've ever climbed. The views were spectacular as I spun around in circles snapping as many pictures of the sunrise as possible. Not long after my arrival, another solo climber summited and we chatted for a bit. I packed my camera gear away and my new hiking partner and I started down the Bross-Cameron saddle. About 50 minutes later we were standing atop Mt. Lincoln with group already up there about a dozen large. While Bross had the largest surface area summit I've conquered, Lincoln was the smallest. With that party of 12 up there it was pretty crowded to say the least. After a few more pano summit pictures we carefully started heading back towards Mt. Cameron with Mt. Democrat shinning brightly in the background. Looking towards the Democrat's peak from the Cameron-Democrat saddle, I would guess close to 150 people were struggling through the talus on an undefined path to Democrat's summit. Our pace definitely slowed down until we were on top of the third and final peak...along with many other people, just after 9:00. We stayed on the summit for a lot longer than any of the other mountains due to the number of people who summited maybe 45 minutes before us, giving them some time to get down off the east slope and avoid a traffic jam. Looking northeast at the three other peaks we had just climbed it was quite a sense of accomplishment seeing the progress that we made that morning. For only being a little over 7 miles round trip, visually it looked like a greater distance. It became clear that going counter clockwise from the Kite lake trailhead was paying off because looking towards Mt. Cameron there was a steady line of hikers in pursuit of Lincoln and Bross. With a lot of cloud cover in the west over the Sawatch range, we started making our way down to the trailhead. As 10:30 rolled around we were back down at the TH...a fairly easy decent in my opinion. Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

14er treble

My day started at 3am and departed towards Alma excited to bag three 14ers in one day. Upon arrival around 5am, I did one last gear and mental check and around 5:15 set off following a sea of headlamps near the Kite lake. I'll point out here that if I were to do this hike again, I'd start the climb an hour earlier. I was blown away by how many people were all ready there. Either way, at that point, I was just a little tiny light in a vast sea of darkness. I was damn near two hours into the hike before I realized I was ascending Mt. Bross, doing the treble of peaks counter-clockwise. In retrospect, that was a better deal than starting with Mt. Democrat and going clockwise--the grade on Bross was much greater than I imagined and coming down looked steep, without a lot of traction to slow you down. Around 6:30 I arrived on the summit of Mt. Bross and it was incredible. The summit is the biggest, flattest 14er I've ever climbed. The views were spectacular as I spun around in circles snapping as many pictures of the sunrise as possible. Not long after my arrival, another solo climber summited and we chatted for a bit. I packed my camera gear away and my new hiking partner and I started down the Bross-Cameron saddle. About 50 minutes later we were standing atop Mt. Lincoln with group already up there about a dozen large. While Bross had the largest surface area summit I've conquered, Lincoln was the smallest. With that party of 12 up there it was pretty crowded to say the least. After a few more pano summit pictures we carefully started heading back towards Mt. Cameron with Mt. Democrat shinning brightly in the background. Looking towards the Democrat's peak from the Cameron-Democrat saddle, I would guess close to 150 people were struggling through the talus on an undefined path to Democrat's summit. Our pace definitely slowed down until we were on top of the third and final peak...along with many other people, just after 9:00. We stayed on the summit for a lot longer than any of the other mountains due to the number of people who summited maybe 45 minutes before us, giving them some time to get down off the east slope and avoid a traffic jam. Looking northeast at the three other peaks we had just climbed it was quite a sense of accomplishment seeing the progress that we made that morning. For only being a little over 7 miles round trip, visually it looked like a greater distance. It became clear that going counter clockwise from the Kite lake trailhead was paying off because looking towards Mt. Cameron there was a steady line of hikers in pursuit of Lincoln and Bross. With a lot of cloud cover in the west over the Sawatch range, we started making our way down to the trailhead. As 10:30 rolled around we were back down at the TH...a fairly easy decent in my opinion.

Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):

Comments or Questions

Heir03

Campground
8/20/2015 4:38pm

Any chance you got a look at the campground and how busy it was? I’ll be doing this hike this coming Sunday morning, and was planning on going out the night before to camp so I can start earlier.

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