One of many
trip reports under the
SilGro home page for Alan Silverstein and Cathie
Grow.
Email me at
ajs@frii.com.
Last update: March 29, 2024
(Previous trip report: 1987_0802_Paiute,Audubon.htm)
(A
Fourteener
trip report.)
(I wrote back then:) Live to you from Cupertino by the magic of the Internet... (I'm on a terminal through a dataswitch to an HP Series 800 rlogin'd to a Series 300 from which I'm vt'd to my home Series 500 system! The S800 is blazingly fast, but rlogin is painfully slow.)
Grays Peak and Torreys Peak were a fine pair of relatively easy summits west of Denver. They were visible from many places including the Bakerville exit on I-70 just before the Eisenhower Tunnel, and also the rest stop near Lake Dillon. Gray climbed his own peak about 120 years ago and thousands of people had followed his steps since then. I first climbed the pair about nine years earlier.
One Saturday fellow HPite Dave Grindeland, his neighbor Joe Harrington, and I left Fort Collins at the incredibly early time of 0515, packed into my Datsun, which was something of a rattletrap. We turned at Bakerville at 0735 (your time might vary, we made some stops). We found the trailhead at the end of the road a mere 3.5 miles from the highway, 12 minutes later. The road was rough but passable by ordinary cars -- but it still turned them into rattletraps, see above.
There were about 50 vehicles parked near the trailhead at 11200'. I bet later in the day it would have been hard to park within a quarter mile... What a weekend crowd! We crossed the creek and started up the excellent trail past the closed gate at 0800.
We made good time despite many stops for Dave and Joe to blister their shutter fingers. The trail was broad, easy, and obvious. Not until high on Grays did we find any choices. We cut left up to the main ridge when we got near it at 1027, 13800'. We found a lesser-used trail rather directly up the ridge to the summit of Grays Peak and arrived there at 1107... So we climbed 3070' in 3:07.
Clouds blew in continuously from the west just below or above the mountaintops, swirling around the peaks in a winter weather pattern... Cold and windy. Still we had phenomenally good weather all day, 50% overcast with broken, puffy cumulus, and a cloud deck far below and away on the plains... Fun to watch them blow by.
There were about 30 people on top of Grays, coming and going all the time. I'd forgotten that the summit sported one of the largest rock shelter walls around one of the biggest, flattest circular areas on any Fourteener summit... Lots of room occupied by lots of happy people. The Sawatch Range was pretty much in clouds, but we could make out Longs Peak, Mount Evans (now renamed Mount Blue Sky) and Mount Bierstadt, Pikes Peak, and the Mosquito Range.
After 45 minutes we mosied down the northwest ridge to the saddle between Grays and Torreys, then steeply up to the next summit, Torreys Peak, at 1244 (another 560' in 32 minutes). This one was a little smaller and less crowded. The great weather didn't change much, and the day got warmer.
After an hour Dave and Joe returned to the trailhead via the normal (trail) route. They encountered some mellow mountain goats back at the saddle. Meanwhile I took off alone 10 minutes later at 1346 down the famous northeast ridge of Torreys. I was feeling strong and the ridge looked... Well... Interesting. It was!
It was really not such a bad route since I had experience on steep, loose terrain. It was a long and complicated mess of jagged, rotten rock, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. First, I was going downhill. Second, there were lots of options at each turn. Third, most of the time I could scramble right along the very summit of the ridge. Fourth, I had it all to myself! And fifth, while I encountered no mountain goats, their summer-shed fur was stuck to the rocks and plants all over the place.
After just an hour and a half at 1515 I arrived at where the ridge route rejoined the main trail at about 12400'. Ten minutes later the others came along and we returned to the trailhead together at 1608. We were all quite ecstatic about the gorgeous day we'd had... We drove home in no rush, arriving at 1925.
(Next trip report: 1987_0812-14_WhiteMountain.htm)