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I had planned on hiking Harvard, Columbia on Saturday and then Yale on Sunday. I left Laramie, WY Friday afternoon. After listening to weather reports on the radio, I was excited for the big 1-2' of snow the upper elevations were supposed to get.
I arrived at the trailhead at oh around quarter past dark. I pulled out my tent and then realized one of my friends had my rain fly back home. So I ended up sleeping under the stars for a while. Until it started sleeting and then I crawled into my jeep.
I set my alarm for 4am, so naturally I woke up at 6. I hit that trail at 7 exactly. I think, ha, my phone goes back n forth with the time for some reason. There was no one else in the parking lot, and I thought it might be my first time on a 14er w/o seeing anyone. It was cloudy when I started:
The trail up to treeline was a real gentle slope, which was nice, but also kinda lame. It was sleeting most of the time.
Harvard, Mount
As far as I could tell, this/these were the only pre-exsisting snow conditions.
Muah. In pretty nice weather. Yes it's a cotton t-shirt, and cotton pants. I had underarmour on though. And no my trekking poles, which were brand new 10$ pieces of shit from walmart that broke in several places, weren't supposed to match my shirt.
Right about hur, the snow/clouds came in. Bear Lake to the right.
Bear Lake
Atop the first steeper slope:
It wasn't snowing that hard, but the wind was brutal and the visibility sucked. So I was a little nervous which made things exciting.
One clear view of the summit:
Wish I had ascended this:
Yay! ~11:30-12~ ha. #7, I had to stop and actually count what others I have done. Bout time!... The wind was brutal up here. I chilled for a little bit and then started my descent. It was snowing pretty good, but it wasn't sticking cuz the wind blew it all away.
Descent, signs of life:
I was excited to see this couple braving the storm on my way down. I stopped and talked to them for a little bit. The guy was asking me about my post on 14ers.com, which was cool, I shoulda got his name. After like 5 mins of walking away from each other, I could barely see them. I hope they had good luck:
Approaching treeline. It rained the whole hike out once I got to the woods. Yale in the background??????:
Looking back:
I got back to my jeep at around 2ish. I decided not to attempt Mt. Columbia because my clothes and boots were pretty wet. (oh boohoo). Yah I just pussed out b/c of the storm. It was pouring at the trailhead. and sat around for about an hour in my jeep contemplating whether I wanted to stay for the night. I decided to go home, mainly because I had a tent, but no rainfly, which wouldn't really work in the rain, dur. And I didn't wanna sit crammed up in my jeep for 16+ hours.
It was a pretty good time. The weather was no where near as bad as I thought it would be. But still, it was nowhere near pleasant.
Thumbnails for uploaded photos (click to open slideshow):
So, you mean that you were actually planning on doing this climb in even worse weather?? Not sure whether that‘s bold, or crazy! Congrats on making it, all the same. Wonder who the other couple were...
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