"If you had a friend who was a tightrope walker, and you were walking down a sidewalk, and he fell, that would be completely unacceptible." --Mitch Hedberg

Gray's and Torrey's Peak
06-06-2004
Elevation Gain: 3600
Trip Distance: 6.75 miles
Total Round-Trip Climb Time: 6:45
4WD Required: yes (but some claim you don't need it)
Exhaustion Factor (on scale of 1-10): 5
Scenery Factor (on scale of 1-10): 5

On June 6, 2004, I woke up around 4am, showered, packed the backpack, ate a quick non-breakfast, and headed over from Westminster to Golden to pick up Jacob for the climb.  I packed lightly as this is a quick climb (compared to Long's).  I brought in my backpack 2 power bars, 2 nalgene's full of water and an empty 32oz gatorade full of water, a long-sleeved t-shirt (which I didn't need), a sweatshirt, 2 hats, gloves, binoculars, camera, compass, advil, and that's just about it, light packer today.   Took I70 to Exit 221, just east of the Eisenhauer Tunnel.  Had to stop about 12 times on I70 to let damn goats get out of the way. Also saw a dead wolf on the side of the road, I didn't think much of it until I saw this article in the paper.... At the exit we headed south down the gravel road.  I got about a mile in Laetitia (my 1995 4 cylinder Accord) before I noticed she was in the red and ready to overheat, on top of this, it was a 4WD road that she wasn't built for (although at the top there was a Mitsubishi Eclipse, don't understand how it made it there).  Either way, I turned around and drove back to a small parking lot just off the interstate.  We started hiking the 3-4 miles up to the trailhead, it was pretty steep.  We climbed about 800 feet before a truck passed us and we hitchhiked the rest of the way up.  10 minutes and 3 miles later, we were starting.   Around 7am we were hiking.  3 feet of snow were in some parts, but it was early enough where we could scale the top of the snow and not sink in.  It was pretty cold so I was wearing the hoodie and gloves.

As usual, I strongly underestimated the difficulty of a green (as opposed to blue, black diamond, or double-black diamond) 14er climb.  I need to just realize that it is STILL A 14ER!! Several 2 or 3 minute breathers later and some climbing and one or two very small bouldering areas later, we were at the summit of Gray's Peak, 14,270 feet high.  It was insanely windy at the top so we stuck around long enough to take a picture or two then wanted to get over to Torrey's.  It took us about 3 1/2 hours to get to the summit from the trailhead.  Only one group passed us and we passed about 8 groups, so with all the snow considered, I was happy with our time.

The traverse down was easy, no snow, but the wind made it a little tricky at times, huge gusts.  The total time from the summit of Gray's to the summit of Torrey's was maybe 45 minutes for us, we passed about 4 groups though, we were moving pretty fast it seemed, but I was exhaused once we reached the top, I mean just flat out tired.  My lungs haven't been at this elevation since last August when I was at 14,286 (besides planes, of course!).  So the breathing was hard.

The descent took us a total of about 2:15 from Torrey's, saw some mountain goats and marmots along the way, and had to go across some snow that would have been a nasty fall if we slipped, but that's because we were too lazy to go back to the trail.   We got back to the trailhead and some guys from CU gave us a ride down the road back to Laetitia.  All in all, it was a good trip and I was able to knock off two 14ers very early for the year and was back home by 3:30 or so.  Now it's time for some more difficult ones like Snowmass and Holy Cross, giddy up!

Here are my pictures from this climb

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