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Mt. Elbert - East Ridge - snow ascent |
Friends from PA came into town. We went out to the area on Friday and camped in the frozen/snow covered marsh area / beaver works just below the jct of the Elbert Trail and the Colorado/CDT trail on Friday night.
We woke up and got out of camp right around 8 am - a little later than I might have liked, but tolerable. The weather looked great as we proceeded up the mountain. About tree-line though, the wind picked up and a few clouds started rolling overhead. From up here the views were incredible - the Mosquito/Ten Mile Range to the East, Mt. Massive to the North - it was everything we'd hoped for. We kept climbing. The snow started falling but it wasn't a white out - we could see the summit and the descent route - we kept climbing. At about 13,000 feet we met a couple of climbers coming down that we had spotted on the way up. They said they got within about 300 feet and turned back due to the weather. We didn't think the weather was that bad and we kept climbing. The slope just kept going up and so did we. At 13,500 Pennsy, ENS and I could still make out one person in our group that was below - the others had turned back around 12,500 or so (they can confirm that elevation). We kept climbing. By the time we hit 14,000 the wind was blowing about 35 mph or so and snow fall stung our faces, but the descent route was still visible and the clouds rolling in didn't seem any darker, so we kept climbing. Finally we hit the summit ridge and then we were there - 14,433 - the highest point in Colorado, the highest point in the Rocky Mountains and the second highest in the lower 48 states! After a couple of quick photos we started boogieing down the mountain. I did a short butt slide down one section which was a lot of fun. We met a guy going up with a snowboard - said he was training for a mountain in the Yukon.
We finally got back to camp and the crew was all there waiting on us. Dhutch was awesome, fixing us hot water for soup and making sure we were all in good shape. Deltahiker had even found my bagels that somehow fell out of my pack. After some food and some rest we fixed a proper dinner and stoked the fire. None of us stayed up late Saturday night as it was pretty cold and we were all pretty wiped out.
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