St. Vrain’s Mountain
Saturday, Brenda & I —along with our friends Bryce and Leslie—hiked to the top of St. Vrain’s Mountain, a 12,000+ summit. It was amazing, the views great and the thin-air experience interesting. All in all, it was a good start in our training regimen…
This all started with an email from my friend Bryce a couple weeks ago. The subject line read “Long’s”, and the message read “you in?”; the rest of the message was a forwarded email from Leslie who was talking about the campsite reservations she was making for an attempt on the Long’s Peak summit in August. Ever since then, vague discussions about trying to hike to the summit of Colorado’s most popular fourteener have evolved into an actual plan to hit Long’s this August.
Hiking is an activity that Brenda & I have discovered is well suited to us; we love the exercise, the views, the challenge, the variety and the companionship. We’ve been exploring the local peaks ever since we both got here, but the higher peaks and their attendant views have interested the both of us, and luckily we have met some people out here that are into the hiking scene as well. Long’s is not exactly the easiest peak to summit, but it’s a popular one and since our friends were already planning this trip and had been to the summit before, it was a great opportunity to tag along.
Doing Long’s will involve camping and a 3AM departure for the summit; it should be interesting. In the meantime Brenda & I just need to get used to altitude, and so Saturday we huffed to the top of St. Vrain’s Mountain:
The view was ok, don’t you think?
More challenges await, and we plan to step up the altitudes and gradients in the coming weeks to get ready for the big ascent. I’ll keep the exact date a secret for now, but it’s in August. We already bought headlamps for the pre-dawn ascent; We’re going.
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4 comments
Wow dude. That looks absolutely awesome. A couple of weeks ago I did a stretch of the Appalachian Trail up in the Berkshires. I was blown away by the scenery…but definitely not the fantastic views that you guys have.
Very jealous but soooo glad you guys are into the hiking thing. Nothing like it.
Yeah, it’s a hiker’s feast out here. But you know, there is plenty of great hiking back east, and that’s really cool that you were in the Berkshires recently. You know, one of our first hikes together (Brenda & I) was the red dot trail at the Delaware Water Gap, which was very reminiscent of the type of hiking we do out here at the tops of the peaks: lots of crawling on big rocks and an awesome view at the summit. Granted, the summit there is like 1,200’ above sea level, but still the views were great. I have pics around here someplace…
The hike begins at the bank of the Delaware River, right at the Gap, and goes right up to the top of the “canyon”. Great views. You and Erica should check it out sometime!
I know it’s not as cool, but I am going canoeing and jet skiing this weekend in WI, near Minnesota.
Sounds pretty good to me, Kath. Stop by Oshkosh on your way and say hello to the biggest airshow in the world.
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