Mt. Elbert

Well it was Friday night again and according to the Leadville, Colorado ranger station there was a nice 8 inch or so layer of snow above treeline on a lot of the Sawatch Mountains. As Jen and I had purchased good snow shoes for just such an event I decided a couloir hike up Mt. Elbert, the tallest mountain in Colorado, would be just great. So at 4:30 in the morning, Saturday, October 18th, 2003, we set out fully equipped to climb up a nice bit of snow above treeline. This trip was going to be allot of fun because it marks my 15th 14er, Jen's 10th 14er, and our 4th United States highpoint of a state (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and now Colorado).

I really wanted to do Elbert because most of the hike is just a walking path, of course it is a 9 mile and relentlessly uphill Sawatch mountain but at least there would be no climbing to get us in a dangerous spot if it was icy.

As it turns out I didn't need to worry. An interesting thing I have learned about the weather near the mountains here in Colorado is that it can change very quickly. For example, lets take two hikers carrying an already heavy load of food, water, and clothes. Add one pair of heavy plastic snowshoes with metal crampons and 6 inch flotation tail extensions, dash in a tad of Leki Poles with the optional snow baskets, finally add some sun that wasn't shining so brightly the day before. What do you get? You get a mountain utterly devoid of any useable snow being climbed by a pair of overburdened and rather silly looking hikers carrying snow gear in 70 degree weather :)

Don't get me wrong. It was a beautiful and wonderful day and Jen and I greatly enjoyed the views and hiking but still...

Luckily fortune favors the foolish and I had an experience which will probably brighten my mood and memories for some time to come. Apparently here in Colorado we have a bird known as the Gray Jay, think of it as the friendly gray cousin to the less amiable Blue Jay. Now these birds apparently become somewhat tame when exposed to people on a regular basis and Mt. Elbert certainly attracts allot of highpointers and regular 14ers alike. Anyone who knows me knows I have a ridiculous soft spot for animals and make a habit of rescuing hurt ones and bringing them to rehabilitation clinics. So when I was first introduced to these Jays I was ecstatic.

Jen and I had just sat down after hiking from the trailhead for about an hour (we began at about 8:30 or so). We talked a bit and admired the scenery when I noticed this fellow (actually quite fat and cute) sitting up in a tree.

Jen suggested we try feeding them and a fellow hiker confirmed that they were quite tame and a little more feeding wasn't going to do any harm. So I put out my hand to see if they would eat from it.

Not only did they eat from it but they flew down and crawled all over me chirping away ecstatically and occasionally flying off to store the food before returning for more. Even after grabbing this little guy for a camera shot he came back to me within 30 seconds of being released.

Unfortunately time was passing by as Jen and I sat with the Jays for at least 20 minutes. Reluctantly I got up and bid the little birds a farewell and headed up towards the summit of Mt. Elbert. The nicest thing about the hike was that these same three little birds followed us up to treeline chirping away the whole time (it was too bad we couldn't find them when we came back down in the afternoon). I can honestly say that is the happiest I have been on a 14er hike, I really should have been a Veterinarian or a Forest Ranger or perhaps just a nature photographer or anything else having to do with animals or the outdoors. Astrophysics is interesting and will probably land me in a good and relatively painless career it's just not really my passion in life.

The hike was pretty standard, we walked up the very steep slopes of Mt. Elbert for awhile before finally summating at around 1:30. I can't say this is an overly challenging mountain, it is really nothing more than a strenuous day hike with nothing remotely technical or scary involved. Still it is beautiful and gets the heart pounding some. We sat down at the peak for nearly an hour chatting with people, Another young couple was up top and were both from Wayne PA. A couple of guys up top we spoke to were also from PA (Allentown in fact) and had relatives living in Ashland which is where Jen's mother works. Either it is a really small world or they put something in the water in PA to export the tree huggers like myself to Colorado :)

We said our goodbyes to the other hikers up top and headed back down to the car. The whole trip down took something like one and a half hours during which our little feathered friends had left (siiigh). Near the car I came across a little bridge covered stream that struck me as quite beautiful so I experimented with some different shots to try to capture the feelings (a la Robert Frost) that it instilled in me.

From here we headed back to the car and went home, I read about stellar atmospheres while Jen drove.

I think I will try the ridge on La Plata next week to get a bit of real climbing in (assuming the weather holds).