Date: June 28, 2003
Elevation: 14,336'
Rank: 5th
Route: Northwest Ridge, Grade II, Class 2, 9.0 miles, 4300ft vert.
GPS: N 39° 1.766' W 106° 28.35'
Team: Matt Esser (Toid), Colleen Rickard, Jamie Vollenweider
La Plata Pk Trip Report:
Pre-climb: Jamie Lynn was on Colleen's swim team in college in Michigan and is her Chi Omega sorority sister, and just happened to come out to Colorado in the summertime when the weather was perfect. And I just happen to be Colleen's boyfriend. So naturally, we wanted to show Jamie a little something-something. You know...something that she would never forget. Thus, Co and I immediately started scheming. And after about 20 seconds of deliberation...climbing a gigantic mountain was proposed, voted on, and ratified. Let's begin.
Climb: Colleen and Jamie were over at my house in Boulder by 5am. I was quite surprised by this so I took a photo of my watch. We were actually *leaving* my house at 5:30 am. That's good stuff! Colleen volunteered to drive which was awesome of her, because she never drives to the mountains and it would be good for her. The trailhead for Lake Creek was on a paved road, so her car could handle it. Jamie quietly slept in the backseat as I tried to provide conversational stimulation for Cobes as she drove. Apparently I had competition from Colleen's giant mug of coffee, and really it was a losing effort on my part because her coffee was #1 and what I said did not matter, unless of course, I interrupted her nursing her lifeforce-in-a-mug. Haha....then, suddenly, somewhere before Eisenhower, we heard a rustle in the backseat followed by the oh-so-innocent, "So we won't get above treeline will we?" Oh boy. Jamie, aka, yet-to-be-initiated-girl-from-sea-level, was going to have some fun.
We were right on time to the trailhead. We got there around 8am. As we were loading up our gear, a few cars started showing up. From our car, we could see a false summit on La Plata, but it was close enough to the real thing and Jamie and Colleen were excited. Please take a moment to note the smiles on their faces in the pictures.
Flying up the mountain would adequately describe the pace we were going at. Basically we blinked and we were in the valley looking up the giant ridge towards the lofty summit of La Plata. Not moments after we snapped a photo of ourselves did we get surprised once again. I'll call this one, The Return of Amy and Jamie. Haha. They caught up to us and said they camped in the valley the prior evening and saw Colleen wearing her Hillsdale swimming t-shirt. How weird is this!?! Of all the mountains...I kid you not, this was again, unplanned, but exciting, as Jamie Lynn hadn't seen Amy and Jamie #2 in over a year! I think I need to sit down and take a deep breath! *whew* Ok, continuing on now...
If before we were flying up the mountain now we had rockets strapped on our backs. Amy and Jamie are proverbial billy goats. They don't wear pants, they don't wear hiking boots, they don't wear high socks, they don't have huge packs, but they do run up these mountains. I guess being in good shape and living in Leadville is a good thing. However, after about 45 minutes of us going at their pace, I cracked. I bonked. I was about to hurl. Never before have I risen so many vertical feet in such a short time. I couldn't imagine how Jamie was feeling. Oh wait, as I look back at her, she's now got the Asprin bottle strapped for frequent and easy access. Smart girl. Unanimously, we decided on taking a good 20 minute break, with mega-feasting involved.
As we were sitting there, we heard this one marmot on the ridge chirping. That's how it started. Then, the one marmot became dos marmots. And they came very close to us. So close in fact, that Co and Jamie jumped up and wanted my trekking poles to hit them with. I wouldn't have it! I just wanted a picture! Eventually, we finished lunch and the marmots attacked our crumbs that we inevitably left, and we carried on towards the ridge.
The switchbacks before lunch had taken most of my strength from me, so now I was having to just take a couple steps at a time rather slowly. It's really steep gaining the ridge. Once you are on the ridge, you still rise at a good rate towards the summit, but it isn't as steep as those switchbacks. Regardless, once we reached the ridge the view of Ellingwood Ridge was fabulous. That's the big picture I have below. That route is the birthplace of legends, and where climbers get knighted into mountaineers. Only a handful of people attempt it every year. You can probably imagine why.
The route stays pretty much on the ridge, however, there are a couple "other" paths that seem to be forming that is more on the west side of the ridge. Either path gets you to the top, however staying on the ridge is probably the most efficient. The rocks here do move, and so one has to be careful, although there was no real exposure. The girls did great and we slogged up the slippery dirt path towards the summit ridge. Upon reaching this, smiles started to appear across the faces of everybody. We were only a couple minutes away now, and negligable elevation gain. La Plata Pk was ours.
Viewing the various peaks from summits is astounding. Snowmass lives up to its name, as it is still covered with snow. Elbert to our north is the highest point in Colorado, second highest in the lower 48. Harvard and Columbia were to our south. We joyfully sat down on the summit after 5 hours of hiking. It was time for us to eat our group candy bars that we all saved for the summit. They tasted like heaven. All of us were on the summit for about 30 minutes and Jamie felt like she needed to get to lower elevation because she had a headache that wouldn't go away. We agreed, and began our descent.
Hopping the rocks on the way down was much easier than doing lunges to step from rock to rock on the way up. The hardest part about coming down was making sure not to slip on the smooth dirt sections of the trail that seemed to be angled pretty viciously. After a couple hours and no real breaks, we were back at the car again. Oh what a joy it was!
On the way back home Jamie thanked me and Colleen for taking her up a fourteener. I have to agree and say that while it's a lot of work, it definitely grants one a feeling of self-accomplishment. Now Jamie can go back to the beach, and look up in the sky about 2.5 miles and think...wow, I was there. You were Jamie, and so were we, congratulations!
Pictures: (Click on picture for caption)
Time:
| Drive |
Ascent |
On Summit |
Descent |
Drive |
Total |
| 2.5 h |
5 h |
30 min |
3.5 h |
2.5 min |
9 h |
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
