Walking Through the Open Door: Mountains!

Living in Colorado has been great because it's a perfect place for us to do what we enjoy and love. Hiking is one of those favorite activities of ours. In Colorado -as I've written about before- there are mountains whose heights reach over 14,000 feet. These are called the fourteeners (14ers). Caleb has hiked to the summit of eleven of these peaks. I'm impressed at his sweet mountaineering skills as I was reminded of how not easy it is to hike these.

Last fall, I hiked my first 14er (Mt. Sherman) with Caleb but it was labeled as the easiest one to hike. It was still challenging since the air gets thinner the higher in elevation you go. Yesterday was much more of a physical challenge than my first 14er hike. Our hike was a loop and was a little over 7 miles. Along the loop there were 4 mountain peaks you can reach above 14,000 feet. We started in a beautiful green basin where Kite Lake is right outside of the town of Alma. You can see the lake where we started hiking from in this picture below.

It was a perfect blue sky day with no storm systems forecasted to come over. Many people were taking advantage of the beautiful weather for hiking. About fifteen cars were at the trailhead parking area when we parked.

This is why they are called the Rockies. Once you get above 13,000 feet many of the mountain peaks consist mostly of rock. There are some high altitude alpine plants that poke out of the rocks here and there. You are hiking over large boulders in some spots, and smaller rocks which are unstable and slide in other areas. I fell at least three times when we were hiking down because we were on a steep incline. The small rocks would slide and my feet would keep going with them leading me to end up on my butt.

There is wildlife at these higher elevations like pikas and marmots. We didn't see any marmots on this hike as none of the area seemed to fit their big boulder type habitat. We did see a few pikas and heard their high pitched squeaks occasionally. This gave me a good reason to stop and catch my breath a couple times to look for them after I heard their chatter. Can you spot the pika in this picture? He blends in well.

We made it to the first peak of Mt. Democrat and boy was I glad to be up there! The view makes the strenuous hike all worth it for me. It's incredible to see mountain peaks in all directions.

Then off we headed to hike over to peak #2 of Mt. Cameron. This picture to the left was taken after Caleb made it to the 3rd peak. I hike at almost half the speed than Caleb hikes at this altitude. When we were about to hike over towards the 2nd peak I told Caleb to go on ahead because I wasn't going to hike up the 3rd peak. He would have to come back to the 2nd peak anyway because of where the route went on to the 4th one.

When you are this high up there are not any trees blocking your vision. You can see most of the trail route out to the other peaks.

Well, Caleb went on ahead and hiked to the 2nd and 3rd peak while I took my time working my way up the steepest portion of the route.

When I was approaching the summit, I see Caleb walking back towards me. He had already made it over to the third peak and hiked back before I even made it to the 2nd summit. Needless to say he impresses me.

The hike over to the 4th peak Mt. Bross was the easiest part of the trail. The summit is on private property. I stayed on the trail while Caleb made a quick stop up at the summit and back down to me on the trail. Below is his Peak #4 picture. Shh, you never saw him there.

As we began our hike back down towards the car we found the trail proved to be a lot more challenging than we anticipated. Parts of the hike were on an incline with a very steep grade. The trail was sandy with lots of small loose rock. We had to take our time with each step so we didn't lose our footing and go sliding down far. The incline stayed pretty steep for over a mile but the rocks got bigger so we had better footing. I still managed to fall a few times with my feet sliding out on the loose rocks. But we made it back to the car feeling accomplished and happy to sit down!

I'm thankful for a husband who has a great sense of adventure and encourages me to do more than I think I'm capable of. Without him I would never have experienced these incredible mountain views.

Here are some of our mountain views during our hike.

Looking back over the basin where we started hiking from. You can see a sliver of the dirt road in this picture above where we started far down below.