So, my first mistake of the day was going to a trailhead I had never been to before and trying to find the trail in the dark several hours before sunrise. I had seen on 14ers.com that some people had packed down a nice trail from the south Elbert TH and I decided to go poach on their kindness in doing so. My goal was to wake up early enough that we could be back at the car before 1 or 2pm and hopefully avoid postholing through rotten snow due to the unseasonably warm temps we are having right now. The first thing I saw when I parked my car was a set of wooden stairs leading down a small hill right in front of me, so naturally I asked no questions and took to the trail. It quickly dissipated to nothingness, and we were left to bushwhack our way out and find a trail(try bushwhacking in the dark via headlamp with skis hanging sideways on you back, its not easy). I saw some lights that(I thought) were moving and I figured that they were campers who were going after Elbert in the morning also and were camping along the trail. So we followed this light for a little until we realized that there was no light. We almost fell through 2 shallowly frozen ponds that were collapsing under our weights, and lost eyeballs to snapping tree branches from skis/snowboard. We found a dirt road and assumed it was part of the trail and we followed it. It took us to the town of Twin Lakes, which I did not know was there, nor did I know that a road even ran back there, I was expecting wilderness. In the middle of the night, it looked to me like the city in House of Wax(a horror movie) and we were frightened and backtracked knowing that we had made a very big mistake. By this point it had taken us over 90 minutes to get to twin lakes, would take more than that long to get back, the sun was already coming up, and I figured that our day was ruined. We started to make our way back over the private property we had just accidentally crossed, and figured that if we wouldn't get a summit anyway, we might as well try to find the trail for next time we come back to this neck of the woods. Backtracking proved difficult also. The snowpack would not support anything in places since we were on no trail, and we were forced to balance precariously on a labyrinth of logs laid out almost too perfectly to get us across about a 300 yard snow field without even touching the snow. After this we found a trail, that led to private property, so we backtracked again. We took the only remaining fork in the road that we could and it led to a bridge and an obvious summer trail that had not been treaded on recently and it was once again not passable. We bypassed the bridge and crossed a stream only to find the most beautiful sign in the world to us at the time "Mt Elbert <-". At this point we heard the voices of some other trail travelers and asked them where we went wrong. Apparently the real trail was located just 15 feet from where we had made our navigation error, but we couldn't see the signs for it because it was so dark out. OK, enough with the talk. Sorry that was so long, just thought Id share the background about the most roundabout and long 14er route that Ive ever taken, heres the pics. Since we started in the dark, and my camera died during descent, I had no pics of the whole mountain from the highway. Here is one courtesy Chris Davenport and skithe14ers.com taken from Highway 24:
This picture doesnt do the moon justice but Ive never seen such a bright, glowing, green sliver of a moon.
The first of the two frozen ponds we almost fell in(just went in ankle deep) shining at the end of this snowfield on our way(unknowingly) to Twin Lakes:
I love sunrise, this pic didnt do it justice taken below treeline, i could not get the right exposure:
Finally on the trail amidst the Aspens high above Twin Lakes in the background:
Oh, there's Mt Elbert(with a lot of wind blowing snow around on the summit). You could actually see when the wind was coming toward you, it was like a huge white tornado. When you saw it coming all you could do was get low, turn your face away, and wait it out:
My pack gets heavy when I hike in my shoes(new blister issues with my 2 year old scarpas, new boots on the way, thanks mom and dad):
Mt Elbert on the right, S Mt Elbert on the left:
Our first look at the cirque and our lines:
I forgot to take just scenics on the summit because it was very windy, but heres some obligatory celebration shots with some of my future conquests in the background:
La Plata peak in the background above my head(look ma, a helmet!!!):
Staring down the steepest couloir in Box Creek Cirque:
Yes, I know, I made turns like an old man when the slope opened up, but I was tired from all the extra hiking that we had to do and was out of water and had a headache, so I didn't risk it on the variable conditions exiting the chute. Heres a pic of the bottom half of our run off the summit that is hidden and off to the left:
By the time we were leaving the trail that I had walked on in tennis shoes earlier in the day, the snow would no longer support skiers. I would go from cruising on creamy corn slush, to sinking chest deep in suncrust in a matter of seconds(cut my belly good on one fall). We really could use a good storm and a cold spell to solidify some of this snow that is going away fast, stupid spring...
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