Colorado's High Point - "Mount Elbert"

Colorado's high point is Mount Elbert at 14,433 feet. It is the third highest of the 50 state highpoints in the US, after Alaska's Mt McKinley and California's Mt Whitney. For you Aussies as point of reference, Mt Elbert is twice as high as Mt Kosciuszko (Australia's highest mountain point). This was to be our last high point on this road trip and the highest mountain either of us had climbed so far!

Mount Elbert is located in the San Isabel National Forest between Leadville, CO and Aspen, CO. We stayed in the town of Leadville, which is the highest incorporated city in the US for one night to help acclimatize to the higher elevations before spending the next night at Elbert Creek campground near the Mt Elbert trailhead. Whilst crazy dusty, we got a cool campsite next to the creek (which was high and rushing from the melting snow higher in the mountains).

On Saturday 28th June, we woke up at 2.30am and go ready for our climb. The trailhead starts at 10,100 feet, and over 4.5 miles it climbs 4,550 feet. This was not only the highest elevation we would climb too, but it would so be the steepest in elevation that we would have to cover. We left our campsite at 3.30am and headed to the trailhead not far away. The trail comes to a junction after about 15 minutes. The sign there points that the "North Mount Elbert Trail" turns to the right and you will feel yourself heading down in elevation. This is the wrong trail as this takes you back to the road so we learnt. We had to backtrack back up to the junction and head slightly to the left and you will feel yourself hiking up. You are now on the right trail! We hiked in the dark with our headlamps, which later I learnt when I was coming back down, was great for not allowing you to see the steepness of the trail you were on! We stopped for breakfast (a protein bar!) at 5am and watched the sun rise through the trees which was beautiful. At 6am, we arrived at treeline and could see ahead of us a long stretch across the mountain and a steep mountain ahead of us. It was the start of a beautiful day with blue sky and light winds. After an hour of switchbacks and hiking across the dusty trail we arrived at the bottom of the steep mountain (our first false summit). We were going slow and were feeling the altitude and I had to keep practicing my deep breathing to keep going. Half way up the mountain, we could see the first of the other hikers in the distance. When we reached the top of that mountain, we were faced with another steep mountain in front of us. The steepness made it tough going, but the desire no to be past by the other hikers spurred us on. At the top, we would still see more ahead of us, so we sat down and took a rest, thinking we still had a lot more to go. It wasn't long before 4 hikers past us! Locals who do this all the time we keep saying (and later learned was true so we didn't feel so bad!).

When we got started again, we were surprised that we weren't as far from the summit as we thought! Man, we could have kept going and not let the others past us if we had known! We reached the top at about 8.45am! It was a beautiful sight with the many snow capped mountains around us which spread across the horizon. It was a great feeling to have achieved this highpoint! The summit was marked with a post and a register. We happily snapped away with the camera and stopped for a chat with a few of the others who were locals and had done many of the other 14ers (there are 54 14,000 feet mountains in Colorado of which Mt Elbert is the highest). At 9am we headed back down the mountain and we arrived back at the trailhead just after 12 noon very tired. We spent the rest of the day napping and relaxing at our campsite. Our highpointing adventure for this trip was over. We would spend the next two days in Boulder and Denver relaxing before flying home.