Fleetmack.com - Mt. Sherman Trip Report

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"I need a bitch with a beeper, a full-time tramp. She can't suck dick like she's lickin' a stamp." --Too $hort

Mt. Sherman Climb
06-19-2005
Summit Elevation: 14,036
Elevation Gain: 2000 ft.
Trip Distance: 5.25 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time (including 30 minutes on summit): 4:30
4WD Required: nope
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 3
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 2

On Sunday, June 19, 2005 I intended on waking up at 3:30 and leaving immediately for Mt. Sherman, but my bed was too comfy, so I slept until 5:00 instead. Jacob called and cancelled on me so I was going to hike a 14er alone as I was determined to get at least one done in June. Around 5:30 I got on the road, took HWY 285 to Fairplay, then got on Park County Hwy 18 for 10 miles. They say you're supposed to be able to go 8 miles in a 2wd car, and 10.5 in a 4WD car, but Laetitia (my 1995 4 cylinder Honda Accord) was able to easily make it all 10.5 up to the Dauntless Mine. Ok, that's not exactly true - I stopped about 300 yards shy of the mine, but anyways.... yeah.

I got to hiking at about 8:15am, a pretty late start for a 14er but I didn't care as the skies were mighty blue. There appeared to be quite a bit of snow, but I braved it with shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Followed an old mining road for awhile, then saw the trail. I made my way up to some other abandoned mine where I ran into Laura, Matt, Nate, and Justin ... 4 people I'd never met before, 2 of whom were climbing their first 14er. I asked them if I could tag along and they said that'd be fine, so I had some company for the day, which was very cool, that would have sucked alone.

The hike was relatively easy, with the exception of a tiresome stretch straight up the mountain. We decided to go straight up instead of following the trail in and out of the snow. We had a lot of scree and loose rocks and needed to stop a few times to catch our breath, I was panting and my calves were quite sore, but it was all good. We made our way up to the saddle and climbed up to a false summit ... from there it's an easy 5 minute hike to the real summit. We got to the summit around 10:30 (2 1/2 hours) and spent about a half hour up there.

For the descent we decided on a different route just to spice things up. There was a lot of slushy and packed snow on the way down, along with a little scree, and some rock fields, and prairie-areas. It was pretty cool, I'm glad we chose that route on the way down. We took our time getting down as there wasn't a cloud in the sky, got back to the car around 12:45, and the 4 of them drove me back to my car. Drive there: 2 1/2 hours, Hike: 4 1/2 hours Drive Home: 2 1/2 hours ... total trip time... 9 1/2 hours. Not too shabby for not wanting to get out of bed! So now I've bagged 8 of the 14ers, hopefully can do 8 or 10 more this Summer, but I always seem to set my goal a little higher than time allows.

Here are the pictures from my trip