Climbing Colorado's 14ers

View from the Top Of Grays Peak, CO - Copyright 2007 Jan Gorski

One of the favorite pastimes of hikers in Colorado is to "bag a 14er" or two. Colorado (or "Gods country" as my uncle Alex called it) is blessed with over 54 peaks that reach 14,000' or higher and reaching the top of these peaks are coveted by many trekkers. Although I've hiked up 27 of them to date, I stopped 'bagging peaks' quite a few years ago when they became too popular. I enjoy the peacefulness of the wilderness, not a stream of people clamoring up a peak to check it off a list. Getting up at 'o-dark hundred' was another obstacle. But a young Air Force major in my office (my customer) was interested in climbing a 14er before she "PCS'd" out of Colorado, so being an avid hiker, I willingly obliged to help her gain a little altitude before she moved on in her career.

A team of eight hardy souls met in the pre-dawn darkness on August 17th, 2007 to climb Gray's Peak. We all managed to set our alarms and get to the meeting point in time to carpool to the trailhead, which some say can be reached by a normal passenger car. None of us would recommend you take a passenger car up Stevens Gulch road but - we did see a Toyota Corolla up there so I guess if you are a really good driver and don't worry about potentially losing parts of the bottom of your car you can go for it.

We were on the trail by 7:20am and the parking lot was almost full (on a Friday). One poor soul on our team was not feeling well this day so she bailed out as we all pumped up our lungs on the hearty ascent. The rest of the gang made it to the top in record time - thanks to the runners in the group who kept us trucking at high speed despite the lack of oxygen.

We watched the weather with a keen eye during most of the hike, since we started the morning out with lots of clouds (not a good thing for climbing at higher altitudes) - but we managed to skirt the t-storms and reached Grays Peak (14,270' - 9th highest) at 10:15am. Since the black cloud over Torreys Peak - a nearby 14er (14, 267' - 11th highest) had flown on by, I recommended to the gang that they head on over so they could bag two peaks in the same day. Those of us who live in CO know that the weather can change in minutes so we all watched the building storms and were ready to bolt on down the mountain at a moments notice.

The gang of six headed over to Torreys (I had climbed both peaks many times in the past so I stayed behind on the top of the world, to be entertained by a group of guys from MD who were figuring out how to open their bottles of Corona to celebrate their feat). I offered them my knife which worked well as a bottle opener ;) After a nice break and a few photos I headed down the trail to check on our teammate who was under the weather.

Grays & Torreys are the best warm up hikes, in my humble opinion - to train for the myriad of other peaks in CO. The trailhead is close to Denver and the hike is beautiful whether you make it to the top or not.

For more info check out www.14ers.org

Happy Trails!