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| Mount Massive from Colorado 300 |
Mount Massive, the name is self-explanatory. This is the 2nd highest mountain
in Colorado and the view of it from Leadville is quite amazing. As Gerry Roach says in his book Colorado Fourteeners: “If Massive were
truncated at 14,000 feet, the area of the resulting plateau would be nearly
half a square mile! No other peak in the
48 contiguous states has a greater area above 14,000 feet. By this measure, Massive reigns supreme.” This has been on my list since hiking Mount
Elbert a few months ago, so I got a hold of Brian and we made plans for another
hike in the Sawatch Range.
The 2:30am wake up was less than satisfactory, but I do like
the comfort of a bed rather than sleeping at the trailhead the night
before. I met Brian at the T-Rex Lot at
3:30am and we were off to Leadville.
From the Park and Ride Lot to the North Half Moon Creek TH took about
2.5hours. After leaving the pavement from
road Colorado 300 onto Lake County 11 the driving went very slow. It was still pitch black and the wash board
was pretty bad. At a few points I
wondered if my Blazer would hold itself together. I never put my rig in 4WD, so just high
clearance will do for now.
At 6:15am we hit the trail and were finally on our way up
Mount Massive. I enjoyed the first
1.25miles on the trail since you only gain about 700ft, it gives your body some
time to warm up before the steeps start up.
There was a lot of dew and rain drops on all the plants and trees from
the previous night, and at some points the trail goes from a nice forest hike
to a in the jungle hike. I really
enjoyed the changes along such a short section, because soon all changed to
rock.
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| Mount Elbert |
By the time we hit the trail turnoff for the summit trail
the sunlight was hitting Elbert with a great light. The view was amazing, so the tourist in me
had to stop and take a picture or two. I
knew the easy part was over and the trail would be nothing but up, up, up for
the rest of the day. The steeps start quickly,
almost directly off the main trail.
Before we knew it we were in the first boulder field making a bend
around a large rock rib. The trail work
was pretty amazing, almost stairs all the way through the boulders which was
great on the way up and on the way down.
It’s always nice knowing you can trust a rock not to move on you, so
thank you trail crew for all your hard work!
We took our first break above the tree line and the boulder field
somewhere around 12,000ft. I didn’t get
any pictures of the Pikas in the boulders but the chirping was constant. They were hard at work gathering grass for
the winter. Between the Pikas and
Marmots it was a busy day of wildlife along this route.
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| Elbert and the Collegiate Peaks |
After the initial boulder field the trail mellows out quite
a bit. Not so much rock and lot more
dirt which is always nice in my book. I’m
not saying it was any easier, because now we were getting higher on the
mountain and I could tell by every breath.
There are a couple long traverses with nicely cut switchbacks that made
it not so painful, but still hard as hell if you ask me. The hard part about this route is you never
really see the summit till you are there, so it’s little goals all the way
up. At one point we took a breather
somewhere in the 13,500ft range. Brian
noticed what he thought was a White Marmot which I had never seen before. The marmot was a ways off, but I did get a
picture of it in my photo album. See if
you can find him in the rocks.
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| Summit Ridge |
As we continued up the mountain I see we didn’t research the
route information as much as we should have because on the upper portions we
ended up directly assaulting the mountain after we missed the switchback
heading to the West. It came at a point
where there were a lot of smaller trails heading directly up and we ended up
following a couple of those till we found they ended. It was nice climbing on the grass and rock and
it was still pretty mellow, a little more heart pumping going on but I enjoyed
hiking directly up the ridge till I stumbled upon the trail again. You can kind of see this on the GPS Track
just below the 14,000ft contour.
I remember looking at my GPS and seeing I was above 14,000ft
and I still wasn’t on the summit ridge yet.
A couple youngsters were on their way down and said it wasn’t far and
you will make it. I hate that, just say
have a good hike. There is nothing worse
than false hope, and what may not be far for you seems like eons to me. After getting to the summit ridge I could see
Brian ahead of me again. He probably had
10 minutes on me, so I didn’t feel too bad.
There were about 6 other people on the true summit which you can’t
really see till you get on the false summit.
So, be prepared for some false hope.
The summit ridge wasn’t bad other than the fact that you are above
14,000ft for so long. It took me quite a
while but it was a very enjoyable section.
The ridge stays class 2, but for the most part it’s a class 1 trail hike
all day.
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| Summit In The Distance |
The summit views were great.
It was a cloudy day, but at least no thunderheads in sight yet. I stayed
on track at 1,000ft and 1mile per hour reaching the summit in just about 4hrs
from the TH. Not too bad for a 270 pounder,
it hurt but it was a good hurt. Right
after I sat down on the summit Brian handed me my summit beer. Today it was an Avery Joe’s Premium American
Pilsner. It was a great summit beer
because the alcohol content was only a 4.7% so you don’t get too loopy up
high. Brian gulped his down…at least it
seemed that way, I am a slow drinker on the summits, but get me down to 5,000ft
and that story changes. It’s funny that
we are becoming beer testers at 14,000ft this year. So far its been a different beer at each
summit, it’s nice testing out the Colorado water up high. As usual I had a great PB&J, had to deal
with a couple begging dogs and enjoyed our little time on top after a great
climb. We decided not to linger too long
just in case a storm starts brewing, so somewhere around 11am we started down.
As we were heading down the ridge we could see hoards of
people heading up the standard route. As
I like to call them: Colorado Ants. The
standard route seemed almost like an amphitheater, because we could hear their
conversations 1,000ft below us. It was
nice once we dropped back over our side of the ridge, we were now on our own
again. My knees were starting to ache as
were my ankles because I was in my hiking shoes not my hiking boots today. I am seeing that it is going to take a while
for me to get used to hiking shoes because I have been a boot guy all my
life. Nothing that some medication can’t
solve for now.
It was a slug down the mountain. It took us about the same time to go down as
it did to go up. I was really slow in
the rocky sections, but made it eventually.
We were able to stay on the trail the whole way down and made note of
where we lost the trail on the way up.
At one point a trail runner came buzzing by us, he made it look way to
easy. Nothing really unique happened on
the way down. There were a lot of
Marmots sun bathing on the rocks and a couple didn’t care for a few humans to
walk by them. The view on the descent is
amazing. All of the Collegiate Peaks are
right in-front of you till you are down to the main trail. I was in heaven when we reached the main
trail again. It was so nice to be off
the rocks, the stairs on the way down were nice but being back on dirt was
bliss to my knees and feet.
With just over a mile to go my body was glad the day was
about to end. I got a few more pictures
of some wildlife and was able to walk a bit faster for once. Brian was nice and never got too far ahead so
he had a lot of patience for my slow slug down the mountain. I was so happy to get back to the car and
take the shoes off and put the sandals on.
Overall it was a great day. I did
enjoy this route even though it was so hard on my body. I would do this route over the standard
13.5miles again if I ever did it again.
Maybe take next week off, maybe not.
It’s all about how fast I can recover, but I will always have that urge
to climb another mountain.
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| GPS Track |
Date: 8/7/2012
Starting Elevation:
10,500ft
Mount Massive Summit: 14,421ft
Total Gained Elevation: 3,950ft
Distance: 7.8 miles
Time: 6:36 moving, 1:51
stopped
Climbing Partner: Brian
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