Climbing Trips
 Missouri Mtn (14,067') - March, 2002

The next day was spent up in Rocky Mountain Natl. Park for some fun snowshoeing and acclimatization. After some marvelous views, good company, tasty pizza, twisty roads through Big Thompson Canyon, and a few puke sessions, we were all back in Denver to enjoy our last night's rest in a heated home for several days to come.

We departed for the trailhead to Missouri Mt. Monday morning. Our destination was Rockdale trailhead but it could not be reached due to snow road closure. Instead, we parked 2 miles further away, making our climb to base camp twice as far! Because of a late start and distance setback, we settled in for low camp, half way to our original camp destination.

The next morning we continued to break trail for the remaining trek ahead of us. About 6 hours and a million post holes later (really, the snow was often times up to my hip!) we reached high camp (about 11,300 ft). Shortly after making camp we met up w/ our last climber who had arrived at the trailhead a day later (he had it EASY since the trail was already completely broken by the five of us). We all settled in for the night deciding to make Wednesday a rest day and summit Thursday.

Part of our ascent to summit required further use of the necessary evil, also known as, snowshoes. To save effort summit morning we decided to blaze the base of the ascent. Once that was done, we couldn't get enough and decided to climb higher to scope out our course after reaching the ridge along which we'd traverse to attain the peak. After three hours of negotiating a huge slope of snowy boulders, we reached 13,000 ft and the ridge. Beautiful indeed, but MIGHTY windy -- needless to say, I was knocked off of my feet several times! We didn't stay up there long, but long enough to plan our route for the following morning.

The plan was to wake at 3:00am Thursday and head for the summit by 4:00am. We all felt great and thought nothing was going to hinder our chances, except of course, the weather ... the winds howled all night long and never let up and when we emerged from our tents we were greeted with 5" of fresh snow and extremely low visibility. Yeah, we didn't go. But 13,000 ft the day prior is no slouch if you ask me! Since summiting was no longer an option and our time on the mountain was running short, we headed down and back out to the trailhead -- what an awesome trip!