Each year, when the kids and I come out to Colorado to hike 14ers, I usually add in a Centennial, so that I can work on that list also. This year, we decided to climb Horseshoe Mtn, a sister peak to Sherman. We arrived at DEN airport mid day, and immediately drove out to the trailhead to car camp for the night. The trailhead is marked with a gate. We chose to park just outside the gate, since the road was closed by a snow bank immediately after the gate. We arrived just before dark, and decided to sleep in the car for the first night.
We started moving around 6:30 am. Shortly up the road was a snow bank, which completely covered the road. We encountered a few of these snow banks, and cleared all of them pretty easily. As we continued up the road, it became clearly obvious to me that this year would be the first year that the kids were "going to SMOKE DAD on the trails." The kids are both very active in sports, and they are both in great shape. Dad was huffing and puffing, while Anna (16 yo) and Nolan (14 yo) were cruising easily.
The "trail" up Horseshow Mtn is a rough old mining road. It is a solid class 1 hike, with no notable challenges, and the grade was very moderate. The ease of this hike is one of the reasons I wanted this one for day 1 in Colorado. Pretty quickly up the trail, the Horseshoe Mtn Amphitheater came into view; Wow! We continued up the road, ultimately switchbacking until we reached the saddle between Horseshoe and Peerless Mtn. At the saddle, we turned left, towards Horseshoe Mtn. We ultimate reached the summit in around 3 hours (3.25 mi). We spent about 10 minutes on Horseshoe, then started towards Peerless Mountain. We reach Peerless at about 4:20 from the trailhead (4.4 mi).
After a few minutes on Peerless, we headed down. Along the route, as well as on top of Peerless, there are significant mining ruins, which were pretty cool. One of the cool items was a truck tanker that seemed to have been parked at one of the switch backs, and just abandoned. How they got that in place, I have no idea. We got back to the car and trailhead in about 6 hours roundtrip (7.15 mi, ~2,700 ft). This was a great first day in Colorado. The weather was awesome, the kids did great, and Dad did good enough to survive, and keep up with the kids.
