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Mt. Princeton
08-10-2008
Summit Elevation - 14,197
Elevation Gain: 3400ft (parked at radio towers at 10,800)
Trip Distance: 6.5 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time (including about an hour of combined rests & summit
time): 6:00
4WD Required: no, but high clearance is necessary
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 4
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 4
I hopped in my car around 2:15 on Sunday morning and headed to Walgreens where I purchased a Rockstar, Advil, two Gatorades. From here I headed up Kipling to Hwy. 285 and drove this through Confier, Bailey, Grant, South Park, and Fairplay until I got to the lovely intersection of Hwy. 285 and Hwy. 24. I took a right (North) on 24 into Buena Vista where I met up with Dan and Chris at 4:30. There were roughly 1,243,870,234,234 stars in the clear sky, it looked incredible. We each drove our cars west on county road 306 (basically go west at the stoplight in Buena Vista) for .7 miles then hung a left (South) on county road 321 for 7.2 miles. Here, we took a right on county road 322 for .8 miles. A fork in the road has 2 signs, to the left is a ranch, to the right is Mt. Princeton. Chris and I left our cars in the parking lot here and hopped into Dan's Pathfinder which had high clearance (but no 4WD). We headed up the 4wd road for 3 miles. The road was pretty bumpy and high clearance was necessary, but Dan and his ride easily maneuvered the road and we arrived at the radio towers around 5:30am. We got ready and were hiking up the old road just before 6:00am.
The trail follows an old road for the first mile, and the climb is uneventful. We stopped to take pictures of the sun coming up as the sun made an incredible red glow in the sky. I was very inobservant on this particular day. Out of nowhere Dan and Chris start talking about "We should ride a motorcycle on the way down today." I had no idea what they were talking about, and 10 minutes later (while we took a break) they pointed out a dirt bike that was lying beside the road. When we got to the actual trail, I would have walked right past it had they not pointed it out. There is a set of rock steps to the right (above tree line near 12,000 feet) that begin the trail. We climbed on up and winded around a nice dirt path for a good half mile. From here the trail curves around the back side of the mountain and you have to begin with the route finding as it turns to class 2 on talus. We did some basic trail navigation and worked our way up to the saddle. From here we saw some people up near the summit and a solo hiker passed us by. We saw a plethora of hikers behind us and we didn't want to share the summit with a large group, so Dan and I kicked it into a little higher gear. Chris had some knee issues and was jamming to his iPod so he told us to go ahead. The trail was safe, basic and easy to follow, so with his approval, Dan and I pushed ahead.
While scrambling up some loose dirt, loose rock, and doing some basic route finding, we worked our way to the summit and arrived there around 8:45. It was freezing on the summit. Dan and I took summit photos and got some eats in the stomach. Chris arrived and his t-stat said it was 38 degrees. It began to sleet on us. I ditched my sun hat in favor of my beanie and put gloves on my now-numb fingers. A father and his two sons arrived on the summit, we took a picture for them, and headed back down. We decided to take a lower route than we took on the way up. Chris led the navigation to the lower trail and we took our time over the loose rock as to not cause any rockfall or slip. It would have been easy to slip as the sleet/rain had applied some lubrication to the rocks. My hiking shoes are about 5 years old and after this hike I've decided they need to be retired ASAP, they are just done. They don't have the grip they once did, and I now have a nice tear in my left foot's toes.
Anyways, we navigated to the lower trail and took a good half hour break. We discussed Family Guy, Phish songs (thankfully Chris said "Bouncing Around The Room" or my mind would still be going insane trying to think of that song title!), Dr. Steve Brule, and other things of hilarity. Was a good hike down. After my trip I refused to talk about last year to Sunshine/Redcloud with an idiot I met on 14ers.com (not the guys I was with, the guy we left because of his unsafe climbing practices), it felt good to reconfirm that good hiking partners can be found online. We stopped about 37 times to put coats on and take them off. The weather simply didn't know if it wanted to rain or be hot! The clouds rolled in and the summit disappeared. We were never in threat of incliment weather, but we were still lucky to have started so early. The fog really did look very cool.
We got back to the car right at noon and Dan drove us down to our cars. I decided to take Hwy. 285 home instead of I70 (which is usually a train wreck). Bad idea jeans. I had to literally put my car in park for over an hour just west of Fairplay as traffic was stopped for some reason. It rained the rest of the drive home, but I still arrived home at 3:00pm to delicious chips & salsa and a Tombstone 4-meat pizza. Yummy!
"Official" 14er #23 is in the books, and this was my 24th 14er overall. My first summit on foot in 13 months. Felt fantastic and I hope to get out and do a couple more this year!
Check out my pictures of this climb here.
(pictures courtesy of Dan since I no longer have a camera)