Logistics of Moving a Mountain, Pt. 1

I – Narrow it Down

A rough outline and guesses of totals on this challenge was only going to satiate me through so much off-season training. I had to get specific about this challenge, if I was going to go into the season with a solid plan in mind.

The 14ers of Colorado are divided into 7 ranges, and there are a total of 58 of them across the state. For the sake of the logistics of my challenge, there were only a few options to consider.

I couldn’t really justify regular day trips across the state down to the San Juan Range, where the density of different peaks might offer plausibility for my challenge. Too far a drive from the Denver area to the southwestern corner of the state. 

I looked at the idea of three peaks in twenty four hours, and drew two mental lines between them. Each hike would have to take me less than 8 hours, from start to finish to getting to the trailhead for the next, and rest would have to occupy what was left of those time windows. 

Weather would potentially mess with those windows, too, so the closer the trailheads were together, the better I could afford to wait out a passing storm if need be. 

Because I wasn’t allowing for shared climbs or popular link ups, I had to rule out the Front Range, and the Sangrie De Cristo Range. 

Tenmile and Mosquito Ranges were a commutable distance, but those peaks made up one of the more popular 14er single day link-ups, the DeCaLiBron Loop. 

Scratch. 

The Elk Mountains offered a decent density of mountains, but it was still over 3 hours of driving from home. A huge part of the plan for this summer was camping and climbing in whichever range I picked, so, the closer the better. I shifted my eyes to the last choice, the Sawatch Range. 

This was the biggest of the ranges, hosting fifteen different 14ers, and yeah it had a few peaks that shared a trail or a link-up but, there were enough. I could make it work there…

II – Getting Closer

I didn’t even think I’d have enough time to climb the whole range before this challenge was going to take place, especially if I was going to know the mountains I’d chosen to a comfortable level by the date of the attempt. 

That meant an off-season spent with topo maps splayed open across the basement floor was gonna have to do. I had to use the early part of the climbing season efficiently.

It was common for Alayna to find me on my hands and knees, flipping through Gerry Roach’s “Colorado’s Fourteeners” and the Colorado Mountain Club’s guidebook on the same topic for cross references and routes, tracing them out on the topos with a finger. 

My first thought was Huron, Elbert and La Plata. La Plata was the first mountain I’d felt ever got the best of me on a hike, so adding that was a no-brainer. It’s also the steepest of them in the Sawatch, and to call a spade a spade there’s a part of me that loves to do things the hard way. 

 

Mt. Elbert was the tallest, and I was kind of robbed of a view from the top by some weather on my first time on the summit. To boot, the trailhead for the main routes on both La Plata and Elbert were under an hour apart, the slowest part being the dirt road, Halfmoon Road, leading to Mt. Elbert. 

Hopping around on Google Maps gave me a decent idea of the mountains I could reach in under an hour that could work as my third for the challenge. Rest while I drove between them, maybe? TBD. 

Belford and Oxford shared a trail, same with Harvard and Columbia, so while I felt like I was running out of options with eliminating all these peaks over factors like distance and already existing link-ups, I considered I may need to do ONE of the mountains of a pre known link and not the other. 

Huron Peak was my first solo 14er, back in the 2023 season, and while it is one of the shortest in height, it’s a beautiful climb. I knew I could do it from a lower trailhead in 6 hours alone, which offset my concerns of all the dirt road driving I’d have to do, between getting to Huron and Elbert. 

III – Connect the Dots… 

It took an embarrassingly long time before I overlapped my topos at their edges just right, by chance, and just so happen to have Mr. Roach’s book open to the right page. I noticed the climbs on the south side of Mt. Elbert and the proximity of their trailheads to the trailhead I’d be using to approach La Plata.

That would negate about half my dirt road travel. If I approached Elbert from it’s south, it’s trailhead would be only a few miles down paved road from La Plata. Then Huron would be the only standout. I could even walk between La Plata and Elbert’s trailheads if I had to, but still had to account for at least an hour to get from there to Huron. 

Wait but…flip, flip, flip…

Yeah…I thought so. Mr. Roach’s book said that the standard routes on both Elbert and Massive were on the same dirt road, that with enough bumps and potholes to make a man miss Massachusetts, Halfmoon Road. Wasn’t there a ton of dispersed camping and backpacking trails through there, too? 

…flip, flip, flip…

Yep.

IV – The Brightest Bulb

The light bulb went on. My poor wife had to pretend to be excited about this news too…the route had finally been formed!!

In one direction or another, it’d be starting with an out-and-back on Mt. Massive or La Plata, and Elbert would be the bridge between them. I’d go up one side of Elbert and down the other. This negated any concerns I had of overlapping with a relatively known pre-existing link-up of Mt. Elbert and Massive via their respective standard routes.

I’d even be able to use a little stretch of Section 10 of the Colorado Trail to span directly between the Mt. Massive Trail and the North Elbert Trail. 

The only driving that’d take place would be between the La Plata trailhead and whichever southern approach to Elbert I’d decide to go with. 

The Colorado 14ers Initiative, the badass trail working rockstars who bust ass to preserve, maintain and establish trails on these 14er mountains, just so happen to reopen a once-popular southern approach to Elbert’s summit earlier in the 2024 season, the Black Cloud Trail. From the topos it looked to lead to the ridge on Mt. Elbert’s south side and ride it, extensively, to the summit.

“That’s worth a look,” I thought.

According to Gerry Roach, who’s word carries a great weight with me if you can’t tell, this trail is packed with epic views and miles of uncrowded ridge above 13,000′. Exposed, yes, but there’s no such thing as an unexposed peak at that altitude. 

And that’s where my next trip up the mountains would start, doing a lap on La Plata, and up Elbert from the south, via the Black Cloud Trail. 

V – Set It and Forget It

La Plata was the same mean climb she was the first time I’d climbed her with a partner. That time, due to an error I made on our descent, we wound up traversing at a primarily horizontal angle for miles across a scree bowl. It turned into a long, wet, rough day where, out of our fear of getting caught in a slide, the phrase “no lazy steps” was born.

It wasn’t nearly so dramatic on my return, though. On the contrary it was a wildly beautiful hike when the Columbines were in full bloom, and it was made abundantly clear how they’d be named the state flower. I made notes of creek access for hydrating mid-hike, the available shelter up til tree line, and did a couple up and downs of the only portion of the hike I remained uncomfortable with. 

Near the top there’s a bit of a boulder filled stretch. It’s rocks reminded me of jetties that went far out into the ocean my brother and our friends would scamper across during our family vacations to Rhode Island as kids. 

Might have felt a bit more invincible as a kid though, some of these on La Plata seemed to have teeth. Some of them would move if you stepped off center. Some had ankle-catching pockets beneath rough angles and it wouldn’t take much to misstep.

It took for all the snow to have melted (late August) before I was able to find the trail up that properly. This would be the roughest stretch of either my first or last of the three peaks in my challenge, so it would likely be done by headlamp. I lapped it til I felt comfortable with that fact. 

Wonderful message boards on the interwebs made me aware of a mountain lion den near the La Plata Peak trailhead. I guess I’d make more of a toothpick than a meal to a predator but, still spooked me out.

After that hike I’d set up camp for the night on Half Moon Road and the next day I went on to climb Elbert via the Black Cloud Trail, all along the southern ridge. Mr. Roach’s word was true. Completely beautiful, solitary, the Colorado 14ers Initiative trail crews did an amazing job. A pika even hopped off the rocks and ran over to check out my kicks, one of my coolest wildlife encounters to date. 

Being on the ridge felt like being on another planet. Ptarmigan, marmots, pikas, a few other birds all populated the ridge but it was entirely void of other hikers til the very summit. It also allowed me to bag South Mt. Elbert, another peak above 14,000′ but without the prominence necessary too be considered a standalone 14er. 

From the top I took another look at the scope of this route and considered the magnitude of this entire 3 peak trek. I felt great about the southern approach to Elbert, and liked it a lot more than the crowds one typically finds in season on Mt. Elbert’s north approach. 

Massive still looked, well, massive, and La Plata still looked mean, but this was it. This was the route. It had to be. It just so happen to be 3 of the 5 tallest mountains in Colorado. In one day. 

This is fine. It would be at least, if I left the damn thing alone and stopped messing with it.