Mt. Harvard Trip Report 10/01/2005

Peak(s):	Mt. Harvard - 14,424 feet
Date Posted:	10/01/2005
Date Climbed:	09/20/2005
Author:	dunking_deutschman


Hiked on or around Sept 20, 2005 from North Cottonwood Creek TH This hike (to Harvard) starts with a pleasant hike streamside up through an old-growth forest. Treeline reveals a very large basin that stretches for a couple of miles to the real climb. The summit is mabye a third of a mile away geographically, but almost 2000 feet above. The trail is VERY easy to follow for such steep terrain as it winds left, then right as you ascend the summit ridge. A pleasant surprise at the end, the last 25 feet are on large boulders that invlove, in my opinion, a fun and easy little scramble that exceeds class 2. It took us all morning to get up there. My wife was really feeling the altitude and I got to haul both packs up the last 1000 feet or so . After a nearly 3 hour approach with many breaks, it took us about an hour and a half to climb the acutal peak. We saw no one, until, at the summit, we ran into, of all people, former shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane. He had hiked solo and saw us approaching the summit, waiting for us so that we might take his picture. It was a bit of a twilight zone affair, as when he asked where we were from, and we replied the Fort Worth, TX area, he asked randomly if we know anyone named Pettigrew. Well, I did and it turns out that I went to high school with his cousin in Arlington, TX. Not only that, my wife also was acquainted with the family, independent of me, 5 years before we ever met . There are, after all, only 7 million people or so living in this area. Its a small world, or mountain, or something... Well snow was moving in, so we booked it back to the trailhead, hiking in the cold rain of the valley, and were met in Buena Vista by this wonderfully spectacular rainbow that I will share with you. You know photographs never do justice to rainbows, so you can double the brilliance of the photo and you will have some idea of the magnificence of this one! http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/4079/10004318gw.jpg http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/3318/10004321hm.jpg

Hiked on or around Sept 20, 2005 from North Cottonwood Creek TH

This hike (to Harvard) starts with a pleasant hike streamside up through an old-growth forest. Treeline reveals a very large basin that stretches for a couple of miles to the real climb. The summit is mabye a third of a mile away geographically, but almost 2000 feet above. The trail is VERY easy to follow for such steep terrain as it winds left, then right as you ascend the summit ridge. A pleasant surprise at the end, the last 25 feet are on large boulders that invlove, in my opinion, a fun and easy little scramble that exceeds class 2.

It took us all morning to get up there. My wife was really feeling the altitude and I got to haul both packs up the last 1000 feet or so

. After a nearly 3 hour approach with many breaks, it took us about an hour and a half to climb the acutal peak. We saw no one, until, at the summit, we ran into, of all people, former shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane. He had hiked solo and saw us approaching the summit, waiting for us so that we might take his picture. It was a bit of a twilight zone affair, as when he asked where we were from, and we replied the Fort Worth, TX area, he asked randomly if we know anyone named Pettigrew. Well, I did and it turns out that I went to high school with his cousin in Arlington, TX. Not only that, my wife also was acquainted with the family, independent of me, 5 years before we ever met

. There are, after all, only 7 million people or so living in this area. Its a small world, or mountain, or something...

Well snow was moving in, so we booked it back to the trailhead, hiking in the cold rain of the valley, and were met in Buena Vista by this wonderfully spectacular rainbow that I will share with you. You know photographs never do justice to rainbows, so you can double the brilliance of the photo and you will have some idea of the magnificence of this one!

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/4079/10004318gw.jpg

http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/3318/10004321hm.jpg

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