Mt Quandary - My first 14er!

bigger, better slideshow, without captions in the way...

A 14er is a mountain in Colorado that tops out over 14,000 ft in elevation... there's only 30 of them or so, and for some people it's a big deal to climb all of them. I thought I'd do at least one... was an amazing view, and workout. I think I'll stick to 13.9ers or so though - the popularity of the mountain was silly. Wilderness should not feel like a highway :P. Great hike though.

This ended up being a lot further away then I thought - I finally went through the Eisenhour tunnel under a huge hunk of the mountains - scary on the way down, fine on the way in - and got to Frisco and Breckenridge. Kind of cute towns, fake-ish. I was confused by all the people IN the tourist town on such a beautiful day next to such beautiful scenery. There was a great paved bike trail through the valley and by lakes and lots of streams... maybe I'll get out there to do such things. Not very far up the mountain at all was the trailhead.

Shortish first stretch through forest... This was not as well maintained as others I've seen, lots and lots of dead timber on the ground. Would be scary in a forest fire. Some nice krummholz meadows... I will tell my story of those sometime (pine-scrubs). Then. Rocks/scrum/scree. and really steep climbs. For a very long way. The first half?ish was fairly steadily steep. Then there was a little break on a ridge. and then it was nearly vertical for a lot longer then it looked. Was fun, lots and lots of little breaks though, altitude and plain old tired. Amazing views from the tops, lots of other 14ers, had someone point them out to me here (as I did at Grizzly peak too, I'll learn them all sometime). Pictures tell the story I guess.

I stopped close to the top and tried ink drawing/painting mountains, might post that sometime.... but. Took off my backpack to do that, and even though i finally bought sunscreen for myself, I did a bad job applying it evenly down my back... haha splotches. doesn't hurt too bad except the back of my neck.

I think I've caught up now... as always, will try to stay more current. This pictures to Picassa to captioning to short story flow seems to be pretty efficient though, might actually do it :). Keep records of old adventures as inspiration for new.