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By Terry, April 17, 2010 9:59 pm

Longs Peak and The Keyhole seen from the east slope of Mt. Lady Washington

Google Earth overview of our route

History was made in 1873 when the Hayden Party effectively put the first woman on top of Longs Peak. Anna Dickinson was invited on the expedition and successfully climbed to the top, out-hiking the other ladies who started the climb but weren’t able to finish it.

After the climb, the party bantered together about naming some of the surrounding peaks. In the book High Country Names, Louisa Arps and Elinor Kingery speculated that Anna Dickinson named the peak “Mount Washington” after New Hampshire’s highest summit, which she reportedly had climbed 26 times. They further speculate that Nathan Meeker, who was also on the expediton, inserted the designation “Lady” into the name Mount Washington in honor of Anna Dickinson.

— Rocky Mountain National Park: The Complete Hiking Guide

I had made tentative plans to hike Mt. Yale on Saturday with Brian, his brother Brad, and Nick, but the weather changed those plans. Instead, I decided that I wanted to hike up to Mt. Lady Washington — one of the peaks surrounding Longs Peak. On Friday, I was browsing the forum on 14ers.com when I noticed that someone had posted about wanting to climb either Hallet Peak or Flattop Mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park. I commented on the post that I was planning on hiking Mt. Lady Washington further to the south if the poster wanted to change his plans. To my surprise, he was actually willing to change them. I made plans to meet the other hiker, Jon, at the East Longs Peak trailhead the next morning.

When I got home on Friday, I packed-up and was in bed at 6:30. Any part of Rocky Mountain National Park is easily 2.5 hours from my home in Colorado Springs. I would need to get up at 1:00 and leave by 2:00 to reach the trailhead by 5:00. When I left the Springs, the city was socked-in by fog and rain. The weather cleared-up a bit once I drove over Monument Hill, but it was clear that it was going to set the theme for the day. So, apparently I told Jon that I’d meet him at the trailhead between 5:30 & 6:00. I was under the impression that I told him between 5:00 & 5:30. I waited at the trailhead for half-an-hour before I decided that I wanted to get going. Just as I put on my backpack and was about to hit the trail at 5:30, a compact silver car pulled into the parking area. This was the car I was looking for! Jon exited the car and we introduced ourselves briefly as he prepared his pack and snowshoes. I gave him my extra pair of YakTrax to use in case we encountered slick conditions.

After signing-in at the trail register, Jon and I made good time from the trailhead at about 9,400 feet. I’m not very talkative when hiking uphill primarily because I try to concentrate on breathing. This was the first time Jon had hiked up this trail, so I pointed a few things out to him like the location of the creek along the trail and the Goblin’s Forest Campground. When we reached a bridge which normally went over the creek, we had caught-up to another couple of hikers. Having been up this trail twice last year, I knew the general direction it went and my GPS verified that. There was another well-packed trail which headed up alongside the creek. We attempted to follow the proper trail, but started postholing after a few minutes. We decided to follow the packed trail up to treeline.

Hiking up along the creek, I noticed a couple of places where flowing water was visible through breaks in the snow. There were also a couple of places where a hiker or two had clearly postholed far down enough that a foot submerged into the creek. We would have to be careful to avoid the same thing happening to us. When we got high enough through the trees, we stopped for a couple of photo opps. I freaked out because I couldn’t get my camera to work. As it turned out, I put the batteries in upside-down! It was a quick fix. In both of the photos to the left and to the right, Longs Peak is on the left in the background and Mt. Lady Washington — our destination — is on the right. We rested up for a few minutes and got to talking. I spotted a couple of people way up on Granite Pass. We needed to head up in that direction eventually, but I wanted to take Jon up to the trail intersection with the Chasm Lake Trail for a great view of Mt. Meeker and Longs Peak. We made it to the intersection before the other two hikers. As it turned out, they had a lot of technical gear on and were looking for a technical climb near The Diamond. They went on their way after a few minutes while I enjoyed a snack.

Longs Peak seen from the intersection with the Chasm Lake trail

Panorama of Mt. Meeker, Longs Peak, and Mt. Lady Washington(13,281 ft.) (L to R)

After our break, Jon and I headed off to the north along what we believed to be the standard trail. There were scant snowshoe prints here and there, but no solid trail. I confirmed on my GPS that we were heading in the right direction. Originally, I was planning to cross over Granite Pass and head into the Boulder Field to gain Lady Washington’s summit, but that just seemed way too long of a route. Eventually, we made it to an area just below Mt. Lady Washington’s northeast ridge. I suppose we could have just headed straight west to the summit, but I wanted to glimpse over the Boulder Field to The Keyhole. If the weather held-out long enough, after summiting Lady Washington, I was considering a hike up to The Keyhole to glance down into Glacier Gorge.

Panorama looking east toward Twin Sisters from Mt. Lady Washington’s northeast ridge.

Jon and I changed direction and headed west on snow up Lady Washington’s northeast ridge. The snow was hard and crusty, but we were able to keep traction beneath our feet long enough to reach rocks. It wasn’t long before we crested the ridge and the Boulder Field and The Keyhole came into full-view. We stopped to rest for a bit here and I reminisced about my trip with Chris last August. We camped out in The Boulder Field in some horrible winds. I don’t think the sustained wind speed ever dropped under 30 MPH and we must’ve experienced gusts up to 60 MPH all night. I don’t think either of us slept very well and when we finally did get up the next morning, Chris was severely under-the-weather. We ate a brief breakfast, then decided to crawl back into the tent to rest for a little while longer. We must’ve gotten an hour of good sleep and Chris felt well-enough to hike and eventually reach the summit that day. It was quite an accomplishment!

We continued over to the north-facing slope of Lady Washington and found it to be mostly snow-free. I thought that the summit that we were looking at was a false summit, so we headed for the summit a little further to the west — closer to Longs Peak. Jon reached the summit first. I stopped to rest near the small saddle between Lady Washington’s first summit and I saw Jon heading over toward the east summit. He said that it looked higher, but I was pretty certain that the west summit was higher. I would have to check my GPS to be sure. Before heading up to it, though, we walked over to the edge of the mountain and peered out over the gorge beneath us which contained Peacock Pool and Chasm Lake. As we stood there, a bank of clouds started moving in below us. I quickly snapped a photo before we continued on over to the west summit.

Jon and I reached the west summit. We removed our packs and rested for a bit, eating snacks to replenish our energy. Snow flurries started to fall. I didn’t want to dawdle too long, so we took some photos before heading over to the east summit.

Longs Peak’s Diamond viewed from Lady Washington’s west summit

Jon on Lady Washington’s west summit

Here I am on Mt. Lady Washington’s west summit

Panorama taken from Mt. Lady Washington’s west summit

Jon and I walked over to the east summit. I immediately found out that it was, indeed, the true summit. There was a summit register tube there! I also verified this by my GPS; the east summit was ten feet higher, so it’s a good thing we decided to go there. Unfortunately, snow was starting to fall at a faster clip, so we didn’t want to hang around. Longs Peak was nearly obscured by clouds and snow. We decided to follow the northeast ridge back down to the trail.

It didn’t take us too long to descend, even though it was nearly all on talus. We did a great bit of route-finding and rock-hopping. When we reached the first large snow field, I took the lead and plunge-stepped downward. When I was far enough down to see that there was a safe run-out, I sat down and glissaded back down to the trail. It was fun! From there, Jon and I found our previous trail and traversed south until we found another snow field with a safe run-out. We completed a second, longer glissade. I asked Jon if he had ever done that before and he had not, so I was glad I was able to show him something a little different and enjoyable. We found one last place for a third glissade near the creek, one that was obviously used for the same purpose before.

The rest of the hike back to the trailhead was uneventful, but Jon and I found out quite a bit about each other and discovered that we had a lot in common. We arrived at the trailhead around 11:46 AM. Here are some stats as recorded by my GPS. tFrom there, we drove to Estes Park and ate lunch at the Wapiti Bar and Grille. I had this super-hot elk burger. It had jalapeños and a habañero sauce. It was so hot, I was barely able to finish it. Fortunately, an emergency glass of milk was able to quell the burning sensation on my lips and tongue.

After lunch, Jon and I walked out into a rain shower. We walked back to our vehicles, bade each other farewell, and parted ways. Hopefully, we’ll have another opportunity to hike again this summer!

Google Earth .KML file of our route (right-click and “save target as” to save the file). NOTE: For some reason, if you’re using Internet Explorer, when you “save target as”, it changes the file extension to .XML. This is incorrect. To be able to view this in Google Earth, change the file extension to .KML before saving the file. It downloads correctly in Firefox.

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By Terry, April 10, 2010 10:23 pm

Mt. Sherman (14,036 ft.) seen from the summit of Mt. Sheridan.

I met Brian on the slopes of Mt. Columbia in June 2009. We struck-up a conversation, I gave him my business card, and we kept in-touch throughout the summer. In August, I invited him to climb Snowmass Mountain via the S-Ridge, which he gladly accepted. Brian, his friend Nick, and I successfully summited in what was one of my most enjoyable climbs of last year.

The story didn’t end there, though. Brian and I have continued to keep in touch. He expressed interest in continuing our hikes/climbs together and wanted to try to hook up for a snow climb. A couple of months ago, I learned of the 14ers.com Spring Gathering at Mt. Sherman. This would be my second gathering, having participated in the one just last October. It’s a great opportunity to meet a lot of people that I interact with online, sometimes on a daily basis. It also gives me the opportunity to learn from peers who have a whole lot more experience than I do. Brian wanted to try and hook up sometime for a snow climb, something relatively easy. Mt. Sherman would provide a great opportunity for both of us to experience our first snow climb and summit. He gladly accepted the invitation.

Our plan was to stay in the small town of Fairplay, CO the night before the gathering. I arrived, first, before 6:30 PM and paid for the room. Once I let Brian know that I was there, I received a text message that his last meeting ran late and that he was just leaving Denver. Being that it would be a couple of hours before he arrived, I decided to head over to Pizza Hut to see if there were any 14ers.com members enjoying dinner there. I didn’t meet anyone, but a woman noticed that I had a name tag (made out of duct tape), and guessed what I was standing around for. She informed me that she just dropped her husband, Brice, off at the trailhead. I decided to head up there to meet some of my fellow hikers.

When I arrived at a campground near the trailhead, I got to meet a few great people who were going spending the night there. I was up there for about an hour visiting with them before I needed to get back to town to meet Brian. Besides, I was starving! On my way back, I was able to reach Brian on the phone. He was in Jefferson, CO — about 15 minutes away. I drove back to the motel and waited for him there. Ten minutes later, he arrived. We greeted each other and almost immediately headed out to eat.

Brian and I went to the Bowl Bar and Grille. We enjoyed dinner there along with some great conversation with the owners. They were hikers as well, but mostly hiked at night. They liked to leave after the alley closed and head out after10:30. Sometimes, they would be out hiking until 3:30 in the morning. They extended an invitation to us and provided a business card. If we are ever interested in joining them for a nighttime hike, we have an open invitation. After eating, we went back to the motel and hit the sack.

At 5:00 in the morning, we woke, ate breakfast, and headed to the trailhead. By the time we got to our destination, there were probably already over twenty vehicles in the area and a LOT of people. I found a place to park my truck and we began to put on our gear. The road we were on had quite a bit of snow that was packed-down and easy to walk over, so snowshoes weren’t needed. After about 15 minutes of prep time, we hit the trail with a lot of other hikers.

It was about 6:45 before we officially started hiking. There were a lot of people starting off at this time. Brian and I hiked at a leisurely pace. We weren’t in any hurry and just wanted to enjoy our time out on the snow. Fully loaded with snowshoes, my backpack weighed well-over 30 lbs. In the summer months, my day pack would weigh half of that, but being that I don’t have a lot of snow experience, I want to be as prepared as possible. A good 5-6 lbs of the weight is water alone, but I also carry food and emergency items. Recently, I purchased an avalanche shovel and probe, which was also a part of my pack. In a compression sack, I carry spare clothes for everything that I wear and then some: baselayers (top and bottom), fleece pants, fleece jacket, liner socks, hiking socks. I also have a spare lightweight shell jacket and pants. Needless to say, I carry a lot of stuff, but better safe than sorry!

Panorama taken from along the Fourmile Creek trail. White Ridge is the mountain on the right; Mt. Sherman is left of center; and Mt. Sheridan is on the far right.

When Brian and I reached 12,000 feet, we decided that we wanted to take a non-traditional route. I had been saying that I wanted to take the snow route, but because I had loaded it and the standard route into my GPS, I wasn’t sure which was which. I spotted a line on the snow heading northwest between Sherman and White Ridge (closer to Sherman)that seemed to be an incredibly direct route to Sherman’s summit. We would be breaking-trail up, so it could be a difficult trek — especially if the snow was soft and deep. We broke away from the main group of hikers and began to make our own way up. I illustrated our general route in red on this photo. The photo on the right was generated on Google Maps using the information taken from my GPS. It shows the entire route that Brian and I took up Mt. Sherman, over to Mt. Sheridan, and back down to my truck. I’ve always wanted to be able to create stuff like this map, so I’m glad I invested in a quality GPS and software!

The snow on the way up the gully was hard and crusty, but our weight eventually started to break through the crust. Years ago, Brian injured his knee and postholing causes him discomfort, so we donned our snowshoes and began our ascent. We got good traction in the hard snow and made good time. We were surprised that we appeared to be the only ones headed in our direction. It appeared that a lot of people were heading up the standard route, a longer, but less-steep hike. Brian commented that this was the steepest climb that he had ever done. I have to admit that it was probably one of mine as well. When hiking, most trails switchback, making them longer, but less steep. Our approach, while more straight-forward, was challenging for the simple fact that we didn’t switchback at all.

Brian on the slopes of Mt. Sherman. We were above 13,000 feet at this point. Mt. Sheridan is in the background behind him and the peaks of the Sawatch Range are off in the distance.

When we were within a few hundred yards of the summit, a couple of other hikers caught-up to us. One of them had a dog. Despite the fact that I was carrying a 30+ lb. backpack, I was among the first people to summit that day. It was a great feeling and my first “snow” summit. The other two hikers didn’t stick around for very long, but Brian and I were up there for a good twenty minutes or so. The wind was gusting probably close to 35 MPH or more, so the temperature was quite bitter. We were going to descend the standard route, but needed to decide whether we were going to head up Mt. Sheridan, first.

Brian’s summit shot. This was his earliest calendar year summit as well.

Mt. Sheridan from the summit of Mt. Sherman.

Peaks of the Mosquito and Gore Ranges to the north.

After leaving the summit of Mt. Sherman, Brian and I began our descent to the Sherman/Sheridan saddle via the standard route. While on the summit, though, we noticed A LOT of people heading up to where we were along the same route that we took. We passed a few hikers heading up to the summit on the standard route. About half-way down, we took off our snowshoes and strapped them to our packs. The trail was getting more and more snow-free, so there was no reason to have them on. When we reached the saddle, we decided that we would continue on to the 13,748-foot summit of Mt. Sheridan. From the 13,200-foot Sherman/Sheridan saddle, it was another 500 feet of elevation gain, but we felt that we could make it.

About half-way up Sheridan, I felt like I completely ran out of gas. Brian had pulled ahead of me, but I couldn’t keep up. The weight of my backpack with snowshoes strapped to it was really bogging me down. It took me a lot longer than I would have liked, but I did eventually make it to the east summit, but the true summit was a couple hundred feet off to the west. I walked over to it and snapped a photo of Mt. Sherman (the photo at the beginning of this post). The wind was really ripping on Sheridan; Brian commented that this was what it was like on some of Breckenridge’s peaks all the time. I was only up on the summit a few minutes before I headed back down.

When Brian and I reached the saddle again, our next challenge was going to be getting down a pretty big cornice safely. Brian found a drop-off point pretty quickly, but not having a lot of snow experience, I took what I believed to be a more-secure and safer route. I took off my pack so I could grab my ice axe. Since I wanted to glissade, I figured that I should do it properly. Grasping the pick and adze in the self-arrest grip, I carefully stepped down an area where it was clear that others had walked over and sat down. Using the spike-end of the axe as a rudder of sorts, I began my glissade. It was fun! I think it would have been even more fun if the sun hadn’t been shining on it for hours. As it was, the snow was getting pretty wet, so it limited how fast I slid. When it became apparent that I wasn’t going to be able to slide any further, I stood up and plunge-stepped the rest of the way down.

I met Brian at the bottom of the slope and together we began to look for the trail back down. There wasn’t a clear set of footprints anywhere, so we sort of had to make our own way down. There were some people below us, so we knew the general direction we needed to go. As we were getting close to the road, I postholed up to my crotch. It took a few minutes to extricate myself, but I finally did. Brian commented, “It’s always funnier when you see someone else do it!”

We made it back to my truck around 1:30 PM. Here are some of the final stats that my GPS recorded (the elevation is not accurate because when I took the photo, I turned the satellite location off). The total about of elevation gained was about 4,700 feet.

Unfortunately, the photos that were taken of me throughout the trip did not turn out well. Fortunately, a fellow 14ers.com member snapped this one of me near the beginning of the hike, so I’m glad I have some proof I was there!

I am on the right side of the photo in the orange shell/jacket. Photo courtesy of Dave Bates.

Brian and I headed back to Fairplay and ate at Pizza Hut. We shared a table with one of our fellow hikers who was also from Colorado Springs, Sean. The conversation was enjoyable and the pizza was great after seven hours of hiking! Once we were done, Brian and I parted ways and headed home.

And finally, THIS: A Google Earth KML file (right-click and “save target as” to save the file)! NOTE: For some reason, if you’re using Internet Explorer, when you “save target as”, it changes the file extension to .XML. This is incorrect. To be able to view this in Google Earth, change the file extension to .KML before saving the file. It downloads correctly in Firefox.

Using the Google Earth application (you have to download it to view the file), you can visualize our entire route with timestamps and everything. This is just another cool little thing that I’m now able to do with a quality GPS unit and software!

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