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Date: January 30th, 2010
Elevation: 11486 ft
Route: Squaw Pass, Grade I, Class 1, 4.0 miles 850ft vert
GPS: 39.68020°N 105.4945°W
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Jimmy Clinton

Pre-climb: One evening as I was sitting around watching football on TV with Jimmy, he mentioned to me that now that he has moved here to Colorado from Texas, he would like to have a near death experience…errr, I mean, climb a mountain in winter. Ah, and that’s the best part about Jimmy, he uttered the words that he trusted me wholeheartedly to pick a climb that would be a good one to do, without having a lot of exposure and snow. All that was left to do was for me to pick out which mountain to climb. However, after the e-mail I sent him mid-week for “encouragement”, (in an attempt to pump him up for the climb), I mistakenly mentioned some key phrases like “avalanche” and “crevasse”…and after reading his response, I might have been a little over the top. In hindsight I hope he didn’t go and increase his life insurance policy for this climb. (Sorry, Jimmy) Thus, ultimately I decided to downgrade the magnitude of what was to be our epic journey and chose Squaw Mountain because the route had no exposure, little snow accumulation, and a pretty cool unique feature at the summit…a fire lookout tower! Plus the summit was only 11,486ft. (I say only, but I’m pretty certain that is about half a mile higher in elevation than anything in Texas)

Climb: We left Jimmy’s house around 6:50am and started the drive to Evergreen, where we would catch the back-road that headed towards Echo Lake and Mt. Evans. It’s called Squaw Pass Road, and it’s paved the whole way, although one might not have known this because most of it was covered in snow, and there wasn’t a guard rail. I mention this fact because we were riding in Jimmy’s new ride which he quietly mentioned (as we were driving) did not have four wheel drive and had three different kinds of tires on it. Plus he gets nervous when driving on roads that have exposure. Not to worry though, I was on a mission to expand his mind and help him get comfortable with how we roll in Colorado and whatever speed we needed to drive at was fine with me. He did great!

It was a gorgeous drive up there, perfect weather actually…blue sky, bright sun, no wind and halfway warm for January. We were the first ones there that morning, and after making our own parking space in the snow, we started the hike up the service road to the top. Yes, yes, I know I said road, instead of trail, but its covered in snow and it would be a great start to the season.

The trailhead is at 10,634ft, and our first concern presented itself….how not to blind Jimmy. He left his sunglasses in the car, which is bad for a snow climb, and superbad if the sun is beaming down the path right in front of us. I tried giving Jimmy my extra set of goggles, but that just made things even brighter, and so we decided he would walk behind me and we would just head for the light at the end of the road.

We made good time, and only one portion of the road had any amount of snow buildup that caused us to posthole. The snow wasn’t very packed down and it appeared that only one person has been on the trail since the last snow occurred and happened to have had skiis because there was an envious set of tracks coming down.

Soon enough we were at the top, and the final push up the rocks to the summit hut presented itself. Jimmy quickly realized there was a trail through the rocks and became a rockstar and busted out the final bit. After hiking the whole way to the top, I was bummed to discover that they had everything in the fire lookout boarded up, even the stairs…oh well.

I did some exploration and BINGO! I discovered a picnic table on the opposite side of the lookout (that was pretty much on the edge of the summit). After some slight encouragement, Jimmy joined me over at the table and the first couple minutes were tense, as he mentioned he was waiting for his legs to relax. We enjoyed our views and there were plenty to be had. One could see from Longs Peak to Pikes Peak. And see Denver to Grays and Torreys. Evans and Bierstaedt were in perfect view and we discussed which mountains would be next. Soon after having some food, we noticed the first signs of other human life coming up the trail. Up and to this point we had not seen anybody else the entire morning…which is rare for a mountain so close to Denver, and on a Saturday no less.

As we descended we went over to the west summit to check the view out from over there and noticed that the fence actually said no trespassing, but oh well, there wasn’t that much over there to see, just some views of the new Echo Mountain ski area.

The descent went really fast as we were making great time and noticed everybody else headed up had one thing in common. They all had snowshoes, and we did not. So, either we are just that cool or just that dumb. Hmmmm…I’m going with the former.

In the end, Jimmy not only passed his initiation but he demonstrated a very important principle not just in climbing, but in life. We are all given a certain set of fears, abilities and interests, some of which are out of our control, but the one thing we can bring to the table in every situation is our attitude. Jimmy has an awesome attitude about life and about climbing and I can’t wait to head out to the backcountry again with him in the near future.

As far as additional information, this hike could be done with kids when the snow is melted, and I highly recommend it as an early winter training hike. We took the long way home by continuing up Squaw Pass Road until it connected with Mt. Evans Rd outside of Idaho Springs. We stopped for some good eating at Tommyknockers where Jimmy had his “salad”. The locally made chips were excellent and the root bear with pure cane sugar, Tahitian vanilla, and maple syrup just about put me into a coma.

Drive: 1.5h
Ascent: 1.25h
On Summit: 45min
Descent: 0.75h
Drive: 1.75h

Date: August 8th, 2009
Elevation: 13,397′
Route: Southeast Ridge, Grade II, Class 2, 8.0 miles 3250ft vert.
GPS: N 40° 01.602′ W 105° 38.940′
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Kelby Young

Pre-climb: Kelby wanted a nice hike and I wanted to get back to the Indian Peaks Wilderness. I decided on South Arapaho Peak because I wanted to see the glacier that was below it and actually wanted to the view from the top, as it had a good central location for the Front Range peaks.

Climb: We met at the church at 6am, and were on the road by 6:20. I had a couple doubts about my Toyota Yaris reaching the trailhead but it didn’t really have too many problems if driven carefully. It was a pretty cool morning (for August), which Kelby estimated in the 40’s, so we geared up and took off.

The flowers were everywhere on this hike! Colleen and I had once taken this trailhead to go to Diamond Lake (Trip Report: right here). There was much less snow this time.

Kelby and I made good time to the mine, which is 2 miles up the trail, we covered it in 1 hour, which is right on schedule, then I don’t know if I wasn’t prepared for the next 1.5 miles to the saddle or what, but it kicked my butt. It took me another 2 hours to get to the saddle, which is roughly 1,500ft elevation gain in 1.5 miles. Not too steep, but I didn’t get a good nights sleep and had junk to eat in my backpack.

From the saddle the views open up and the glacier looks awesome. The remaining route looks difficult although it’s pretty easy with solid footing the entire way. It’s only 700ft above us and 0.5 mile away. Not too bad either, but slightly steeper. Enough that a father and his son turned around just from the look of it, but they could have easily made it if they had wanted to try.

Upon reaching the summit our idea of going over to North Arapaho diminished as we now had to start heading back down if we wanted to get home before it was dark. The weather was great and we were in good shape. Signed the summit log and looked at all the surrounding peaks for 30 minutes, then headed back down.

It amazes me how much distance one covers in the early part of the day on the way up the mountain, because on the way down you certainly start to feel like the route somehow got longer than it was in the morning. Kelby was a mini Chuck Norris and was all over this hike since he walks around for his job and just spent a week hiking up in Yellowstone.

Drive: 1.5h
Ascent: 4h
On Summit: 30min
Descent: 3.5h
Drive: 1.75h

So, yesterday Colleen, Claire and I went to go see The Wiggles Live tour at the Broomfield Event Center. It was actually really entertaining. For your enjoyment, I have put together this under 4-minute video to re-cap the madness. Enjoy!

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Date: July 18th, 2009
Elevation: 13,951′
Route: Southeast Ridge, Grade I, Class 2, 4.2 miles 2251ft vert.
GPS: N 39° 24.198′ W 106° 07.698′
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Jeff Warren

Pre-climb: Jeff has been working out on P90X and wanted to “Bring It”, so I decided take him to something bigger than the foothills around Boulder. (Funny side-note: As we were driving to Fletcher, Jeff was in the middle of telling a story about Alaska and spotted a 14er and called it a mere foothill…oh Jeff. Let me introduce to you to a hike in the “foothills”…then we will see what you have to say…)

Climb: Disclaimer: All hikes with Jeff require Starbucks before even leaving the house. We hit the road around 7:15a and made it to Breckenridge without any problem. We stopped to pickup some food and other things at Safeway because Jeff didn’t bring any water, any sunscreen, hiking boots, any food, a backpack, a jacket (well, he found a jacket luckily buried in his car at the trailhead). We immediately knew the day was going to be interesting when we saw the road blocked off to Blue Lake Trailhead and there was more than a few Search and Rescue vehicles on the mountain. Apparently the night before a group of hikers attempted the West Ridge (the crazy route up Quandary Pk I did mistakenly in 2001) and they couldn’t summit and bailed off the ridge, but went the wrong direction and ended up in the wrong gulch. A helicopter was required to find them.

We continued on up the path but immediately got lost going through the super over-grown bushes (we had a great rainfall here in Colorado this last June), and we got many cuts on our legs as we tried to wallow through them back to the main trail. When we reached the trail we met up with 3 other ladies who also had trouble following the trail and walked through their share of bushes before finding the correct path. (They had the blood on their legs to prove it)

The hike was now much easier and Jeff was still mentioning to me how after we got done with the hike he was going to do his P90X workout when we got home…and not just any of the workouts, the leg and back workout…sure Jeff.

Upon reaching the abandoned mine, we took a break and decided to see where the ladies were going today as there isn’t many people hiking a 13er. They too were headed up Fletcher, so we decided to team up and and head up the gully. (Meanwhile Quandary’s trailhead on the easy side, was a zoo.)

The snow had melted enough for us to make a plan of attack on how we were going to reach the saddle (13,294′) between Fletcher and Quandary. Because we were so late hiking, the snow had become an issue as it was melting fast in the warm sun and become soft and very slick when we walked on it, which meant it was going to be dangerous if we had to cross a large snowfield.

After confirming Jeff was still okay, I just busted a move up to the saddle (or “brought it” as Jeff would say), zig-zagging my way around the snow and rocks. Once I arrived at the saddle and could see the rest of the route, I plopped down for a break and noticed how late it actually was. 12:30 was pretty darn late in my book, but there was hardly a cloud in sight and the hike out wasn’t going to take that long so I decided it was still a go.

Once everybody else arrived we took a break for food and Jeff mentioned he was just going to “hang out” here at the saddle and wait for us. One of the ladies attempted to follow us for about 100 vertical feet, but once we reached some snow, she too called it quits saying she didn’t want to hurt her knees anymore and went back down to Jeff who was now beginning to show some signs of altitude sickness.

The three of us continued on, pressing up the final summit pyramid of Fletcher when we encountered our last problem. How to unlock the snow at the top of the mountain. We tried to find a ridge that allowed us to gain access without having to go over the snow, but we couldn’t find one and being only 50ft below the summit it was very frustrating to be so close but unable to see how we would reach it. Finally one of the ladies figured out a way to “hug” the snow and kick-step her way across it to the summit. Please checkout the pictures below to see what I mean.

Wow, what a summit!! I could see all sorts of 14ers from the top of Fletcher. La Plata, Elbert, Massive, Grays, Torreys, The Bells, Snowmass, Pyramid, they were all in sight. (Not to mention Quandary, which was dotted with about 30 people on the summit) But here we were, all alone on the summit of Fletcher.

In fact, no one had been up Fletcher for a week, and the summit log went all the way back to ‘05.

After a short break we made our way back down with the two ladies deciding to glissade down most of it. However, after my experience on Mt. Yale, I decided against it, and actually ended up meeting them at the saddle at the same time.

We decided instead of going down the dangerous snow, we would take the ridge off to the west of where we came up. It would be a much smoother decent, even though the route wasn’t listed in any guidebook that we know of, we thought it would be more fun. And it was!

The hardest part was figuring out how to get off the ridge, but it meets up with the original trail right around the place where the mine is. And we noticed that’s where Jeff and the other lady were waiting for us. They had only arrived 15 minutes before us and they too wisely took the ridge down.

However, as we were coming down the final steep section, I ran out of water and very quickly went into a weird state of mind. I turned into a zombie and actually think once I ran out of water, I got dehydrated and was pretty confused. Luckily between the five of us, there was some extra water to be had once we all got together again and I slowly regained my consciousness on the way home.

One side note, as we were walking down the road to where they made us park the car because there was a search and rescue going on in the morning, there was ANOTHER going on as we were leaving. Two guys got lost going up the West Ridge of Quandary and their girlfriends/wives/significant others were in the parking lot with a worried look on their faces.

As soon as we got cell reception we called our wives to let them know everything was okay. Due to the late start and the slow pace we were a lot later in getting back to our car than we anticipated.

I was so worn out by being on the mountain in the sun that when we stopped to grab a bite at Smashburger, I could barely eat. Jeff though had no problem downing his BBQ Cheddar Burger and Garlic Fries goodness. However, Jeff did have a *huge* problem with his sunburn on the backs of his legs! Ouch!

All in all, good hike, great memories, great view, definitely recommend it. Don’t be a 14er snob, this 13er has just as great of views if not better than some of the 14ers.

Drive: 2h
Ascent: 4h
On Summit: 30min
Descent: 2.75h
Drive: 2h

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