A month or so ago a couple of friends asked if we would be interested in joining them on a try for a winter summit of Mt Elbert in Colorado. Elbert is not a technical climb but at 14,440' it is the second highest peak in the contiguous states and still deserves some respect, especially in January! We decided to jump in and so found ourselves headed for Leadville last Thursday.
As luck would have it, the weather was unbelievable - unseasonably warm with an amazing shortage of snow - at least on the first day. The second day, when we did the actual climb to the peak, was snowy and cold with a pretty good breeze blowing. I will show those photos tomorrow.
For today, here are the shots from Day 1 and a few distance photos, in no particular order.
First off is a profile of one of the "camp robbers" - a common and appropriate nickname for the gray jay. We had four that hung around our camp at tree line - about 12,000' - begging for scraps of food!
We got to camp early on the first day and set up the tents. To kill some time we took a short hike up the slope to get the lay of the land for the next day's push. In the second photo, above, you can see Ken and Bill making their way up the trail with a large lake many feet below in the background.
Next is Ken finding some of the scarce snow just below tree line.
This shot to the right is one I took of Mt. Elbert as we were driving to the trailhead from Leadville.
The shot above is a panorama of Mt Elbert while the one below is of the nearby Mt Massive. These two panoramas were taken on our way out of town after the climb. You can see that we received several inches of snow while we were there.
This show shows Yvette and Bill at the snow-free trailhead before we began.
I really like this shot of Yvette studying her map at the top of our first day's hike - about 12,700'.
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