The forecast called for a perfect autumn day: cloudless and a high of 42 above tree-line, with little to no wind. So Brian and I swung by Highlands Ranch to pick up Ben on our way to the Sangres and to the Horn Creek trailhead for a day hike of Colony Baldy and post-hike bar-b-q. Besides us three, we had Ben’s dog, Jax, a canine alpinist, and my brat, Opus, a cute mutt whose terrier heritage manifested itself in growls in the car and at the trailhead. Read more…
As summer winds down, it gets increasingly more difficult to find the motivation to get out. It should be the opposite, as, strategically, one might think the best plan of attack would be to hit it hard in the Spring, take a break for the first few weeks of summer, when there isn’t enough snow to ski, but just enough to make it annoying to hike. Then as the monsoon winds down, you’d wind up your trips, but any mountain man knows all too well the undeniable call of the wild and one’s insatiable desire to head back in to the hills – time and time again. Keep reading…
I had another day of PTO to burn and figured I’d keep up the yearly tradition of heading to the Sawatch for a big slog to sort of say goodbye to summer. I didn’t really have anything specific in mind, just something reasonably accessible that would get me and the dog some exercise up on a long ridge line. After a few minutes of research I found something that fit the bill perfectly – a few TRs exist out there detailing what is loosely called the “Emma Burr Grand Slam”. Read more…
For a few years now the Ripsaw Ridge has been high on my list of must-do routes in the Gores. This iconic ridge run collects the ranked summits of C and G, in addition to several unranked sub-peaks between them. But even more important than all of that, the Ripsaw is “one hell of a ridge run” smack dab in the middle of one of my favorite areas in the state. With a fresh coat of snow falling in the Elk Range over the weekend, Rick, Steve, and I diverted our original plans for the day to a range we knew would be dry (thanks to our Gore guru friend, Mr. Chalk). Once we made this shift, it took all of two seconds to land on the Ripsaw as our new plan. Keep reading…
