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.

Arizona's High Point - ""Humphreys Peak"

Arizona's high point is Humphreys Peak at 12,633 feet. This was going to be our first high point over 10,000 feet, and the impact of altitude would be interesting though we had made the point of trying to increase our altitude with each high point we had done so far on this trip to prepare for it.

From Guadalupe Peak in Texas, we drove all day and night passing El Paso near the Mexico border in Texas back up through New Mexico and staying the night in Gallup before arriving in Flagstaff, Arizona at 6pm. Flagstaff is a pretty cool town - plenty of hotels and restaurants and with a college in the town its quite busy compared to other towns we had stayed in. The town is also the gateway to the Grand Canyon South Rim which is about 80 miles north of the town.

At 6am on Thursday 19th June, we left the hotel and made our way to the Arizona Snowbowl (the main ski area in Arizona) about 7 miles from town. Winding our way up the mountain, we arrived at the large parking lot at the trailhead for Humphreys Peak. We were on the trail at 6am - signing in as the first people on the trail for the day.

The hike starts in the trees (which was already surprising, we thought we would be hiking through desert like conditions, not in trees and lusher conditions) on a well marked trail which was easy enough though at 9am we still weren't above the trees which concerned us about the pace we were on. A few people had already past us, including a young women with a small backpack who passed us and disappeared into the distance. Obviously locals who were well used to the altitude we told ourselves as we continued on. Out of the trees, we reached the ridge that runs betweeh Humphreys and its neighbouring peak Agassi around 10am. We were at 11,800 feet and could obviously feel the impact of the thinning air and high altitude with our lack of breathe and slow tiring pace. Sitting down for a break we snacked and appreciated the view around us which showed mountains still with snow scattered across its peaks and mountain sides.

We continued on, hiking in the very dusty and rocky trail which had become very steep and we clambering over rocks continuing up in elevation . The young woman who passed us on the way up passed us on her way back down. Snow was still evident off the side of the trail, many feet deep. My pace was extremely slow which disappointed me but I had to remind myself my body had never been so high before, and never at such altitudes. After three false summits, we finally made the summit just before 12 noon. It was a pretty sight, with a view of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon in the hazy distance, and views across the red and yellow Arizona desert as far as we could see. The summit used to be marked with a stick which had obviously fallen over. Now it was just marked with some rocks. A few photos and we were keen to get down. The climb had taken us longer than we had anticipated. We didn't get back to the car until just after 3.3pm...nearly 9 hours after we started. We had read books telling us the peak could be reached in 5-6 hours so the altitude had really knocked our socks off today.

After the hike, we made our way to the Grand Canyon South Rim as Mark had never visited it before. It was packed with tourists, but it was good to see the Grand Canyon in summer (I had only visited it in winter previously). Only an hour away, the Canyon is definately worth the visit.




Grand Canyon South Rim: