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Green Mountain – Lakewood CO Girlfriend Hike #4 11/17/13

Rooney Road > To Green Mt Summit trail

Starting Elevation: 6061 ft

HIghest Elevation: 6804 ft ( 900 Ft Total elevation gain)

Trail Length: I thought 4 miles but we came up short at the summit and then went long…. so we got in 5 miles.

Trail Uses: Hiker and biker

Degree Of Difficulty: Easy to Moderate, although I have heard the Rooney Road start point is a considered a hell climb I don’t think it is that bad.

Bathrooms: Yes: at the parking lot

Pets: Yes on leash only

Fees: None

View of Denver from the summit of Green Mountain

I have come across meet up hikes a lot while researching for hikes we might attempt. A few months ago I realized I needed to spread out, meet new people and learn more about hikes in Colorado. So I signed up for Meet up… have you ever seen meet up or taken part of an event by them? I am strangely curious.

There is one group that is a hiking after work group and I thought, why not? I also asked my girlfriend Lisa if she wanted to try meet up and to submit for this hike….. we both got in. Come hiking evening, Lisa had a lot going against her and didn’t make it very far, while I went on to finish with lots of curiosity about what this trail looked like during the day. On the way home we were chatting about the hike and she really wanted to beat it, since we had a girls hike coming up I figured why not.

I usually try to pick easy hikes and this hike is at its core easy, what is hard is that initial climb but the rest of the park is relatively easy. The trails are very well planned out, wide and have VERY high usage.

On this day, the forecast was for 40-60 mile an hour winds during our hike. I seriously considered canceling….. but I really super love these hikes with my girlfriends and I wanted to give Lisa that chance to beat this hike, plus sometimes the weather forecast is off. So instead I texted them all late Saturday night to say prepare for crazy winds.

We got tot the trailhead at 7:30…. with NO wind (stupid forecasters) . This trail is really popular and that morning was no different, but we still had the freedom to move at our own pace. Our goal was to finish and not worry about time, my company was amazing! They hadn’t exactly worked up to a 700-800 foot elevation gain in just a mile but they were troopers every step of the way. We made our way up the beginning to come up to the most amazing views of the front range and Denver itself. The view is always the best part of any hike… oh and I am always looking to gain more converts to my love of hiking…. good views SUPER help with that.

Karin and Lisa did awesome! I promised them that we would summit and had own since I knew the summit was more than they had prepared for, what i didn’t expect was for them to want to do more. I was thrilled!

Lisa, Karin and Levi( Karin crazy adorable dog) were super troopers in wanting to push themselves a little further to see more and work harder that morning. I said I am totally willing to push when they say the word so we headed over to the tower further down the path. It was a great morning I could see the summit lust in their eyes, it happens when those views are perfect like there were that day. The nice thing about getting a taste of summit lust, is it makes you want to see more. We were talking about harder hikes in the future for more amazing views…. I think I am getting them hooked, yay me more hiking buddies!!!

LEVI!!!!

I have come to appreciate this hike for how close it is to home and how easy it is to get too. I am looking forward to getting more people there to feed their summit lust.

Quandary Peak 14,265 Ft (our first 14er!!!!!), Breckenridge CO 7/2/13

10 Jul

Views at the summit

Quandary Peak Trail, East Approach

Starting Elevation: 10,995Ft

Summit Elevation: 14,295 Ft ( 3300ft total elevation gain)

Trail Length: 6.5- 7 miles miles officially ( my fitbit said 8 miles at the end) It took us 6.5 hrs; 3:45 hrs going up 2:45hrs coming down

Trail Uses: Hiker, Biker, Horses

Degree of Difficulty: Strenuous

Bathrooms: There are at least 2 parking lots and the first one does have port-o-potties, the one we parked at did not

Pets: On leash

Fees: None

Summit Marker

Quandary is really close to Breckenridge where we were staying and one of the easier 14ers you can do in Colorado. I can’t lie in that I wanted to try a really easy one for our first 14er. After our reluctant turnaround so close to the summit of James Peak a few days before, we made sure to not chance weather coming in at the wrong time when we tried Quandary, so we got up at 2:30AM and to the trail head at 4AM. We have also heard that the trail is crazy crowded the later in the day you go and we kinda wanted it to ourselves so we could go at our own pace, breathing as heavily as we needed. Plus we could barely sleep anyway because we were so excited for our first attempt at a 14er!!!!

As we pulled up there were already 3 cars in the parking lot, we got ready in record time and right before we started , there were people in one of the cars and one came over to talk to us. He said that he was a camp counselor that had brought a group of kids to hike Quandary to catch the sunrise and one of their kids got altitude sickness so he was sitting with him. apparently this was a surprise since he had done Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive earlier in the week, just a reinforcement that you never know when altitude sickness is going to hit.

Here are the pictures I took of the parking lot and trail head when we got back down around 11:30AM

Walk across the road to the trailhead

There is something weird about hiking with your headlamp on, it feels strangely exposing in that we don’t know who or what is watching us. At the same time, it forces you to only to pay attention to the trail lit up in front of you and not dread what you see up ahead which kinda makes the incline seem much easier, for me at least. Plus it means coming back down will be like doing a loop hike because it will be brand new for us.

Proof we started while it was still dark

We actually made surprisingly good time to get for the first 2-2.5 miles and as the sun started rising we were just at the tree line.

What it looked during the day

The colors as the sun rises always take my breath away, as we were approaching the gravel we could see the top of Quandary lit up in a beautiful pink gold.

Getting close to the traverse. Quandary looks beautiful.

The trail at this point was a nice steady climb with some rocks mostly dirt, it did get steep on occasion but not too bad.

As we moved to the next part of climb, it is through a ton of rocks all sizes and gravel, to me it seemed like the steepest part of the trail. Which coincidentally, is also the hardest part of the trail both going up and coming down. The ground is pretty unstable and then the steep grade, well it makes the trip down more challenging.

Coming down the gravel part

Going up it around 6:30AM

After the gravel climb it levels out for a nice comfy traverse which lets you catch your breath and feel more comfortable with the altitude, in fact I felt so good that as we approached the summit climb I figured it would be cake. We hit the summit climb a little before 7AM.

The traverse in the distance as we were climbing down from the summit

The path up the ridge to the summit is totally hidden until you are on top of it and I was kinda worried we would be bouldering up the 1000+ feet in elevation left to go, but as you follow what you are on, you see it clearly and it is very well planned out. It is steep and you can find yourself bouldering a little on accident, but then spot the trail just ahead. The hardest part was just plain old breathing, we found ourselves stopping every 20-30 feet just to catch our breath.

Super close to the summit

The last little bit was over a small snow field, it was well used and already slick. Aaron’s issue with heights kicked in here so we did take the time put our yaktrax on but I don’t think they are necessary. It did help us get to the summit, and put Aaron more at peace although once we took a few pictures together on the summit, he sat in a wind shelter and didn’t move until we went back down, asking me like 10 times to watch out….not so close… Trust me the summit is plenty big no fear of falling off.

View East from the Summit

It was pretty emotional for me when we got to the top, I felt so incredibly accomplished after losing almost 2/3s of the weight and training for a year and a half, we did it! I totally cried happy tears! Then I cried tears of amazement because of the views. I am already planning for our next 14er! We got to the summit right at 8AM, because we were so early we had it to ourselves almost the whole time, there was just one other person who came and went. On the way down, the trail was super crowded, like I am guessing we passed over a 100-200 other hikers. Going early was the best decision we made. After the directions will be our favorite pictures!

Directions: From I-70, take Exit #203 for Breckenridge – Highway 9 and travel south through the towns of Breckenridge and Blue River. Travel 18.3 miles from Exit #203 to State Road 850( Blue Lakes Road) and turn right (west). Make an immediate right on McCullough Gulch Road (State Road 851 north) and travel .3 miles up the maintained dirt road to the trailhead. Spaces are limited, but roadside parking is permitted. There is also a parking lot immediately after turning onto Blue Lakes Road with the port-o-potty but we opted to go to the Official trail head parking.