Mt. Belford – West Slopes

Date: June 19, 2005
Elevation: 14,197′
Rank: 18th
Route: West Slopes, Grade II, Class 2, 11.0 miles, 5900ft vert.
GPS: N 38° 57.633′ W 106° 21.633′
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Colleen Esser

Pre-climb: I seriously needed to get out into the backcountry and Colleen didn’t want me going alone. After much debating on where to go, I decided that if I were going to camp, the conditions were ideal for Belford/Oxford. (I have climbed Belford before…click here for previous trip report) Since you have to climb Mt. Belford to get to Mt. Oxford, and Belford was a rough day, camping high was my best option if I wanted to have a realistic chance of getting Oxford. The weather was scheduled to be blue skies all weekend. Perfect. Now that all was left to do was climb.

Climb: Fall 7 times, stand up 8.

Writing trip reports has become a very personal experience for me. It’s facinating for me to go back in time and read a trip report from when I hiked the same mountain a couple years ago and compare the feelings, the reflections, the raw attitude I had in that snapshot of my past. For me, this climb was about refusing to give up when the hiking seemed like it would never end. It was about pulling myself out of the snow, after I had post-holed up to my waist. It was about rediscovering myself, when the corporate world had consumed so much of my life.

Colleen and I decided to leave early Saturday morning and make the drive down to Vicksburg during the hottest hours of the day and do some afternoon hiking in the “cooler” weather up past treeline and pitch camp before sunset. For once everything worked out as planned. We had everything packed and in the Blazer by 11am, and we were heading west by 11:30a. After stopping in Leadville at the Subway for a big lunch so we didn’t have to bring camp cooking gear up the mountain, we arrived at the TH three hours after we left our house.

As soon as we got out of the car we realized how hot the weekend was going to be. Instantly we started sweating and applying sunscreen. I must say the bathroom at the trailhead had dramatically improved its smell since the last time I was here. At 3:45p we signed the trail register and were hiking up the many, memorable switchbacks (mind you we were camping, so we had full packs on). We crossed the river after an hour twenty, on sketchy logs that I didn’t think was going to hold the weight of me and my pack. As I began to put my foot a little further on the now wobbling logs, I was certain I would be dropped down into the gushing river below. Amazingly, we both made it across without them snapping, or losing our balance. Forty minutes later we were at the cabin, and twenty minutes after that we were at the trail junction and shortly after that we found a camping spot about 200 yards up the trail.

After pitching our tent, we watched the sunset and then proceeded to go to sleep. Well, Colleen anyway. I couldn’t sleep as it was now only 7 o’clock and I started to experience dehydration from the intense heat of the sun during the hike in. I had been drinking plenty of water mind you, (2L in 2.5 hours), but it was the water during the work week that I didn’t drink enough of. It caught up to me bigtime and I wrestled with sleep until about midnight when I had polished off another 2L of water and downed 1000mg more of Advil. I then don’t think I could have been woken up without severe physical prodding.

The night sky was beautiful, the wind was negligent and the moon shone brightly. Colleen and I woke up around 5am and were hiking by 5:30am. We were the first ones headed up the steep shoulder of Belford. We took the switchbacks slowly and topped out on Belford in a little under 3 hours after leaving camp. There wasn’t a cloud in the entire sky. We couldn’t find the summit register, but it didn’t matter, I had now been on top twice and had a more important agenda — making it over to Mt. Oxford’s summit via the connecting ridge.

While the ridge only drops 700ft inbetween Belford and Oxford, the drop from Belford is steeper than the rise to Oxford. Being the first ones on the summit, we had some initial trouble finding the best way down to the trail through the snow. Eventually we connected up with the trail and was making what we thought was good time until we got passed by some “trail runners” who were doing CIRCUITS of the ridge. Crazy. They were the first people we had seen all day. At the saddle we took a break to take off our jackets and began to make our way up Mt. Oxford. About halfway up Oxford there was a snow patch that we had to cross and already at 10am it had gotten soft. I fell through and since I was wearing shorts the harder snow underneath cut my leg in a few places. Talk about snow burn! We made the summit of Oxford at a leisurely pace of an hour forty-five to do a 1.2 mile traverse.

At the summit we enjoyed views in all directions, again with no clouds in the Colorado blue sky, and took a break for lunch. Colleen was smart to bring pineapple up with us. Boy did that taste good. I applied more sunscreen so I wouldn’t get crispy and we swallowed the thought of having to climb Belford again. While this doesn’t sound hard for those of you reading this, please realize up until this point, we’ve climbed over 5200ft vertically in 5.5 miles. We now have to downclimb 700ft in probably 0.7 miles and ascend 700ft in 0.5 miles. Ugg. So much work. So tired.

Of course we made it, again in 1:45, and upon doing so we saw a lot more people on the summit of Belford, or on their way up Belford. We took a short break to eat some food, or in Colleen’s case, call her dad since it was Father’s Day. Apparently Verizon has a tower that gives a good signal to the top of Mt. Belford. *sigh* Where can we go anymore that doesn’t have cell phone capabilities?

The descent down to camp was brutal because the sun was now beating down on us at full force and we only carried 2L each of water for the morning because that’s all we had left and would need to get to camp, grab our water filter, then descend another half mile to the river, so we could filter more water. And shortly after arriving at Belford’s summit for the second time, we both ran out of water. Plus the switchbacks didn’t help at all. We got passed by just about everybody. That’s ok though, it wasn’t a race and we were just trying not to get hurt.

After arriving back at camp the dehydration bug struck again and I had trouble standing up and bending over when trying to pack up the tent. I got really dizzy and needed water. I also needed more sunscreen. We hurried down to the river and filtered three new nalgenes of fresh, cold, mountain water and boy did it taste good. Soon after we were back in the trees where the sun wasn’t so hot and we began descending quicker. At this point our feet were killing us as we had been hiking for quite a while now and just wanted to be back at the car. After an unforgettable number of switchbacks we finally made it back to the trailhead.

I can almost guarantee that I’m going to try to get Missouri from Clohesy Lake so I can avoid Missouri Gulch for a while. It’s a great trail…just neverending. But the bottom line was that I enjoyed myself and I remembered how much I love to be in the mountains.

Drive: 3h
Ascent: 5.5h
Summit: 20 min
Traverse: 1.75h
Summit: 30 min
Traverse: 1.75h
Descent: 4h
Drive: 2.75h
Total: 14h