September 10, a fine fall day, and I was visitin’ my cousin, Steve for a few days in Denver, and so decided to tag with him on some type of mountain traverse. This here’s Cletus, and Steve’ll be mad as a badger to see i done commandeered his email account. So we get to Montgomery Reservoir and head up the jeep road. There’s a sign, “No camping,” and then there’s no more signs for miles. I account this a failure on the part of the Forest Service… Read more…
Last weekend Rick, Kyle and I packed into Sand Lake in the Sangres and picked off nine thirteeners over a three day span. The linkups were long, the peaks were rugged, and the weather did its best to make things interesting. We ultimately left the area a bit humbled, but happy to have pulled it all off. Sandwiched between the Great Sand Dunes and the Crestone Group is a long, curving drainage known as Sand Creek. Best accessed from the Wet Mountain Valley over Music Pass… Read more…
On Monday I was able to pull off a big loop in the northern-Sangres that had been on the short list for a few summers. The loop collects seven 13ers around Cotton Lake between Mt. Owen and De Anza Peak just north of the Rito Alto group. Armed with a near-perfect weather forecast and a day off work, I finally decided to pull the trigger. Things went pretty smoothly overall and it turned out to be the big, satisfying day I was hoping for. Read more…
A few weekends back Rick and I headed into the Holy Cross Wilderness to tag a pair of 13ers on its northwestern edge – Gold Dust and “Pika Peak”. It turned out to be a fun day, with a neat traverse between the two peaks and a stop off at Lake Charles for a dip before heading into Eagle for some cold ones. We started out from the Fulford Cave Campground and followed the trail southeast up into the East Brush Creek drainage. Keep Reading…