"All our lives all we ever sacrificed has paid. Everything is possible to me." --Slipknot - Scream

Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford via the Missouri Gulch
08-07-2005
Elevation Gain: 5800
Trip Distance:  10.75 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time (including 15 minutes on summit): 10 hours
4WD Required:  no
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 7
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 6

On Sunday, August 7, 2005, we decided to climb Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford in the Sawatch Range (My 11th and 12th 14ers).  After an unexpected time delay, Towns, Jacob, Miriah, and I finally got out of Golden around 4:45-5:00am, a much later start than anticipated, but Jacob made up for it by driving about 90MPH through South Park.  We took HWY 285 to HWY 24N to Chaffee County Road 390 .... 7.4 miles west on 390 to the Missouri Gulch Trailhead.  This road is easily accessible by a 2WD vehicle, but we had an Xterra so no worries either way for us.  We got started on our hike around 7:25am ... about 1 1/2 hours later than we would have liked, but the weather was like the 3rd bowl of porridge, so we were money.

The hike starts out, for the first 1000 feet of vertical gain, through a trail in the forrest, it is well marked - but wow, I had no idea how steep it would be, it was kicking my ass.  I really didn't keep track of time as much as I normally do, but I'd say it took us an hour and a half to get above tree line, we were going pretty slowly as this was Towns' first 14er and he claimed it was the first exercise he'd gotten in 2 1/2 years, but he's a Marine so I knew he could make it.  We kept on truckin', followed the trail, and got to the summit in about 4 1/2 hours ... a bit slower than I would have liked but the weather looked hunky dory so I didn't care.  By now Jacob and Miriah were well ahead of us and likely on or near the summit of Oxford.

Towns and I sat on the summit for 5 minutes or so and started on over to Oxford.   The climb down is a little loose and the ascent to Oxford is a nice trail, but it's steep and time-consuming on already-tired lungs!  Made it to the summit in about 1 1/4 hours, stayed there long enough to take a sip of gatorade and take a picture (about 1 minute) then headed back down.  The decent of the saddle was the easiest part of the day.  We made it about 3/4 of a mile in 10 minutes, then the worst part of the day arrived.  The climb back to re-summit Mt. Belford.  I'll take the opportunity to swear here ... that part fucking sucked ass, possibly sucked more than any part of any hike I've ever done.  I was exhausted, Towns was in the same boat as me.  Our legs hurt, our feet hurt, we were thirsty and hungry, and had the steepest part of the day ahead of us.  We toughed it up and made it back to Belford's summit (from Oxford's) in just over an hour -- quicker than it took to do the opposite! I was impressed with that.  We sat on Belford's summit again and had a sandwich and some gatorade and started our descent.

The descent was uneventful and took us exactly 2:20 hours ...we got back to the trailhead at 5:20 ... total round-trip time of 9 hours 55 minutes -- WAY longer than I expected.  My legs hurt, my feet have blisters (for the first time since my 1/2 marathon training!), my back is sore -- let's just say for some reason this one hurt my body more than anything has before -- even Long's Peak.  Not sure why, maybe it was just the wrong day to go.  But either way, I was happy to have summited 2 more 14ers.   I have to give MAJOR props to anyone who can do this hike and include Missouri Mountain on the same day -- that's one hell of a hike, and I ain't doin' it!   The total vertical feet gained on the entire hike is around 6000 feet (well over a mile straight up!).  Towns and I talked to one guy on the trail who decided not to do the saddle to Oxford, he said "Until I climb all 53 of the other 14ers, there's no way I'm ever coming back here to do Oxford!"

Here are my pictures from this trip

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