Centennial and 14er Finisher: Cereal

[nyker]

Nice job and impressive! Congrats!

[ShakyLegs18]

Well done, Cereal! It was a special surprise of my Snowmass adventure to welcome you onto the summit and get to marvel at your accomplishment.

[seannunn]

Congratulations man. That puts in some pretty elite company.
Well done.


Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

[smrcka]

Nice work Cereal! Congratulations!

[Dobsons]

Congrats and well done!!!

[kyrawhitworth]

Awesome work!! Congrats! What a great way to finish!

[Cereal]

Thank you all for taking the time to offer congratulations, and for the fun finisher post, Bill/Tiff

As of now, I see the current centennial list as a collection of 108 peaks:

• The highest 100 LIDAR-ranked peaks (Niagara and Trinity now tied at 99 and 100, after Columbia Point’s demotion to unranked)
• Plus three historical centennials that were on the pre-LIDAR list (Teakettle, Dallas, and Columbia Point)
• Plus the five named/unranked 14ers (Mt. Cameron, El Diente Peak, Challenger Point, North Eolus, and Conundrum Peak, as included in the list of 58)

To attempt to be brief (alternatively: story time)….

I found my way to Colorado in May 2017. I dabbled with some 14ers in my first year here.

After shoulder surgery in June 2018, I started knocking out some bigger days in the Sawatch, and as many of the Class 2’s as I could, while my shoulder healed. I started on some centennials (not just the 14ers).

At the 2019 Spring Gathering, I met climbingcue, and after a chance encounter on Conundrum that August, we tackled the Chicago Basin 14ers and centennials together over Labor Day Weekend. I didn’t get a chance to research the cents beforehand, so I chucked the entire Roaches’ Centennials guidebook in my backpack, just in case we had the time for them – and we did get Jupiter, Pigeon, and Turret that weekend! After his 14er finisher in January 2020, I started joining him on random centennial 13ers.

In 2020, I started dragging my now-wife along. We had some amazing trips to the San Juans and confirmed that she can indeed keep up with climbingcue and friends (haha). Over 2020, 2021, and 2022, we knocked out many of my remaining Class 3+ peaks together. Notably, in August 2021, after pivoting to the Sangres due to the weather forecast in the Elks, we ended up unexpectedly getting Little Bear, Blanca, Ellingwood, Challenger, Kit Carson, and Columbia Point on back-to-back days. That really gave the old checklist a boost.

In 2022, for a wedding gift, climbingcue and Chipmunk generously gifted us the cash for Culebra permits! Previously, I had always insisted that I’m just too cheap to care about those peaks, and thus I’d never finish the list. Well, now, it was on!

When our son was born in February 2023, I sat at 83 centennials. Baby in tow, we started chipping away at the Class 1 and Class 2 14ers that my wife had not yet done, plus a few new cents for me. So, over the summers of 2023 and 2024, we summitted 17 14ers and 12 13ers with our son. It was tough, but it was (mostly) a blast. Culebra (our son’s first, at four months old!), Pikes, the Halo Ridge loop, Rio Grande Pyramid, and the Sunshine-Redcloud-UN-UN four-pack were notable efforts during these two summers. Our daughter was born in February 2025, and our son was getting heavier, but the four of us were able to summit 8 more 14ers together in 2025. Sherman, Castle/Conundrum, and Missouri were some great family outings in 2025.

Meanwhile, I had developed a rough plan to finish the centennials by my 40th birthday, in September 2026. This would also ensure that I finish within ten years of my arrival in Colorado. Lastly, it turned out that we would need to adjust our family hiking objectives – this was decisively clear after the four of us backpacked into Horn Fork Basin for Harvard/Columbia in September 2025! That would be the last time I could (would?) carry our son up above treeline. So, I wanted to make a push to finish the centennial list so we could start focusing more on smaller hikes that a three-year-old could manage on his own power.

By late 2025, we had made plans to finish with Hagerman and Snowmass in 2026, as climbingcue and Chipmunk were easily convinced to repeat the S-Ridge. They would combine it with Siberia, after we split up for Hagerman and Fravert the previous day.

My wife now sits at 48 14ers, so we still have a few fun objectives to look forward to in the coming years. Our son has been obsessed with Longs Peak since he could speak (or, I suppose, possibly before that), but I have been telling him that he must wait until he turns six. We are looking forward to figuring out how to continually facilitate the kids’ interest in the mountains, and by now we certainly know that it will look different each year.

I owe a ton of gratitude to climbingcue and Chipmunk for the climbs, the memories, the kindness, and the friendships. To Bill Middlebrook for this website, and to many others for the trip reports, beta, good times at gatherings, and chance encounters. To my in-laws for their willingness to watch our kids to accommodate some of our bigger days/trips over the past 3+ years. And to my wife, who understandably hasn’t always appreciated “the list,” but has nonetheless been encouraging and supportive through it all.

I am excited to slot the S-Ridge in my top five, which now shakes out neatly as follows:

1. The Mighty Rinker (better than any centennial or any other mountain on Earth)

1. Vestal (Wham Ridge)
2. Little Bear (West Ridge Direct and traverse to Blanca)
3. El Diente (North Buttress and traverse to Mount Wilson)
4. Snowmass (S-Ridge)
5. Teakettle (South Face snow climb)

[Cereal]

Woohoo - very cool knocking out two lists at once and on a fun route like S-Ridge! Congratulations!

Thank you! I appreciated your trip report(s) in preparation for the S-Ridge.

[Cereal]

Congrats!! Happy to have been peak adjacent to your finisher

And I agree with Chipmunk, I think the greatest accomplishment in your quest might be getting the Subaru to Lead King Basin

Haha thanks – I’ll take what I can get!

As implied in another recent thread (tongue in cheek, or not), it doesn’t take an “elite” athlete to get up to the tops of 100 peaks, though I will certainly admit that it makes the climbs more enjoyable to have some semblance of fitness. However, the logistics and time commitment seem to be the tougher part of it – even living in the Denver metro area, as I am grateful to have better access than many out-of-state list-chasers on this site!

That said, we have seen some amazing corners of Colorado that we would otherwise have never known, and I could say that that alone has made this list worth pursuing. In recent years, scoping out parks and playgrounds in various mountain towns has been a joy, too!

[Cereal]

Well done, Cereal! Snowmass is a stylish way to finish. It was a pleasure to share a couple snow climbs with you - one fantastic, the second a little more warm and sleep-deprived

I'll always chuckle at waking up at a trailhead and asking, "Are we on the other side of the Divide?

"We drove over Independence Pass!"

Best of luck in whatever the future holds for you and your family!

Thanks, haha! Yes, we were reminiscing about that one during the finisher trip. I will always remember the date on that one, because it was a week before our wedding and I didn’t die, haha.

[Cereal]

great job and congrats! if you enjoyed the centennials, the bicentennials are even more special, and are worth checking out

Mega congratulations, Cereal! Enjoy the retirement.

Never say never, but, as I mentioned above, it is time to shift our focus more toward family outings. However, during a few recent trips, when my wife has made the inevitable snark, “I’m never doing this again,” I have been keen to point out that our kids might make us take them back here one day….

[Cereal]

Congratulations to Cereal on completing the 14ers and centennials! Looking forward to hearing about those "questionable decisions" so I can see how they compare to my own questionable decisions.

I too am curious what specific events climbingcue had in mind when he mentioned questionable decisions!

• Perhaps the aforementioned ascents of Pigeon and Turret via the Pigeon Creek Approach, with no research other than the Roaches’ guidebook?
• Maybe dragging him up and over a cornice at the top of Pearl Couloir on Cathedral?
• Ditching our group for a spur-of-the-moment summer screeing descent of American Peak via the Patriot Couloir(?), and sprinting up Handies Peak?
• The Maroon Bells traverse after a dusting of late September snow?
• Bringing my wife up the famed Snowman Couloir with microspikes and a borrowed axe? (Ok, maybe that was it, haha.)

I can certainly list off a few questionable decisions that were made sans climbingcue:

• A couple of extremely exposed, slightly-overhung moves on Little Bear’s West Ridge Direct route (we were certainly off route to climber’s left)
• Dragging my wife and seven-month-old up Phoenix Peak via Canon Diablo (I think the kids here would say, if you know you know….)
• Letting our one-year-old eat way too much trail mix at the summit of Holy Cross (it was quite the scene when he got sick and puked it up)
• Descending Antero’s Raspberry Gulch route with both kids during a quickly-impending electrical storm (pretty scary!)