After driving in from Denver and climbing Mt Emma the prior day, I awoke just before 4 and headed up the shelf road to Yankee Boy Basin at 4:15. Right after making the turn onto the YBB road, I passed two hikers who told me they had turned their Toyota Tundra around about a half mile beyond, at a point where running water had rutted out the road and made it more a stream than a road. Keep reading…
I lucked out and the weather held so that I could climb Emma on the afternoon of my arrival. Some cloud cover, but no thunderheads. After securing my campsite at Thistledown, I revved up the shelf road and past the turn for Yankee Boy. I didn’t get much farther, though. At a point where a private road heads straight into the lower basin, the road makes a wide switchback south and then east. Keep reading…
On Sunday Steve and I tied together a nice run of peaks starting with the Sleeping Sexton north of the Bells and ending with the unnamed duo northwest of Willow Lake. True to form, it was a long and somewhat tedious linkup, but a nice way to take advantage of a picture perfect weather day in the Elks. This area of the range offers up several long ridge runs, including the Bells traverse and Len Shoemaker to Pyramid. While not nearly as cool or grand as its big brothers, this Sexton linkup was a nice way of combining some lesser-climbed Elk 13ers from Maroon Lake. Keep reading…
A few weekends back Anna-Lisa, myself, and a few friends added another chapter to our annual Twin Lakes camping trip. We normally look to pull this trip off in August but this year schedules dictated it’d have to be late-June. As has become customary, Anna-Lisa and her friend Melina set off to summit another 14er (Mt. Yale this time) while I looked for 13er options in the area. After much deliberation I decided to head over Indy Pass and up the Lincoln Creek Road to check out the Anderson/Truro area. Keep reading…