For several summers now I’ve headed over to the Elks and pieced together a big wilderness loop of some kind. I’ve always felt if you’re gonna spend all day on your feet whether it’s for training purposes or not, you might as well look for something unique in a cool area to make things more interesting. With its vast network of trails, there are lots of options for these kinds of big days in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness. So I decided to check out another loop in the Capitol Peak area of the northern-Elks which had long been on my wish list.
This one is a tad on the obscure side in that I haven’t noticed too many people mention it or run it over the years. One or two trip reports from over a decade ago can be found online, but generally speaking, this linkup doesn’t seem to get as much traffic as some of its more popular siblings (Four Pass, Three Pass, etc). The route goes like this… start at the Capitol Creek TH and follow the ditch trail up to Capitol Lake. Continue up and over the pass north of Capitol Peak… Read more…
A few weeks back I took Jax down to the Winfield area and ticked off the “new” LiDAR 13er that sits to the south of Huron Peak. It was a nice day out, and one of the only peaks I’ve hiked up to this point in the summer. A few years back a group of us scrambled across the Apostles Traverse, hitting West Apostle along the way which happened to be my final 13er in the Sawatch Range (at the time). Fast forward a few years and LiDAR elevation adjustments have added/removed a few dozen peaks to the list, including several additions in the Sawatch and even one in the Gore. Keep reading…
Twelve years ago lordhelmut put up one of his old legendary TR’s about a trip into the Gores. Their crew did a series of ridge runs that day, culminating in a connection between Peak Z (13,327′) and the “barnacle attached to Z’s backside,” Peak Z Prime (12,975′).
Times were much simpler back then. And as such, the unbridled enthusiasm of virgin Gore summits combined with the pre-apocalyptic internet era inspired Brian to publicly christen Peak Z as “Deion Sanders Peak.” This was due to the fact that since Deion believed he “deserved a salary that equaled a QB’s, Z-Prime probably feels it deserves just as much respect and attention as its larger, ranked neighbor.” And so naturally, the connecting ridge between Z and Z Prime became “The Prime Time Traverse.” Keep Reading…
Ski season is over in Colorado, for most of us at least. It wound up being sort of an odd spring with great coverage and ski conditions throughout May followed by a dramatic warmup in June. We went from something like 120% snowpack in the northern regions to an impressively rapid melt off, and all of a sudden spring ski season was over as quickly as it began. May was the month this year, and though I stayed close to home I managed to get out for ten days in the month on skis, revisiting some old peaks and lines and exploring a few new ones. Keep reading…
