Camping above 14K. Opportunity For Test

Which 14er are you camping on? I’d be interested to hear your gear list just for grins. Have a great trip, I’ll be in Leadville all weekend.

Thanks!

Leadville has good stuff surrounding it. Massive/Elbert is a beautiful area!

I hate Quandry for personal reasons.

I’ll be at Grays/Torreys

I haven’t drawn up my list… I’ll do that this evening and put it up… right now I”m going off for a day hike with my SLR.

I’ll be doing the Leadville 100 mountain bike race this weekend so no 14er unfortunately.

My wife and I just did grays/torreys a couple weeks ago. Left real early and were first on the summit. We had the summit alone for like 45 minutes! Watched the sunrise and everything. There are some pictures here on my wife’s blog if you’re interested. They’re just one post down if you scroll.

http://mrspivvay.blogspot.com

Added a picture

Awesome! My brother was in Denver for the summer, and this past weekend I flew up and we hiked around as we meandered our way back to South Texas. We climbed Massive the morning after I got there (it wasn’t pretty – from 1xxx to 14xxx in less than 12 hours), and then we drove to Ouray and just hung out and car camped the next day. The following morning, we climbed Sneffels via the west ridge. It reminded me of why I love the mountains in Southern CO, especially the San Juans. It’s an order of magnitude more rugged than the mountains in the north, which have a picturesque beauty of their own.

Ben

Well that was fun!

I was not backpacking light. My pack was about 45lbs but only a fraction of it was mine. The rest was gear that I was required to carry.

We were on the summit for 14 hours.

It rained. It snowed. The Perseid meteor shower went on above us when the sky was clear. We watched the lighting all around us in the far distance). We didn’t really sleep. We were camped at the true summit with the tent only 3ft from the summit register.

Here are some pictures:

Ruby Mountain

Alpenglow on Ruby Mountain

The Sunset from the Summit at 8:40PM

Moonrise over Denver and the Front Range at 9:30PM

Moonlit Lighting Storm 11:30PM
(Bierdtsat, Evans, and Pikes Peak visible)

Dawn 6AM

Sunrise 6:10AM

Front Range

Iry

20 Mile Shadow

Definately Not Backpacking Light…

Ruby Gulch

Summit Camp

Cloudbank at 13,500ft

Descending into Horseshoe Basin 11AM
(Grays Lake, Argentine, Squaretop, Bierdstat visible)

Stunning photography! Congratulations on a great trip!

Brian

You really captured the place. What a great way to spend the night. Thanks for posting.

You were crewing for Montazumas? I’ll probably be there racing next year :)

Summit, thanks for sharing! The photos are awesome! I can’t believe no one has asked this yet, so I will. What would possess you to pack a mountain bike up and down a 14er? There has to be a story there.

It appears Christopher kind of asked while I was writing this.

http://www.montezumasrevenge.com
The most brutal 24 hour bike race in existance. Nobody has ever completed the course in 20 years.

I sure as heck wasn’t carrying a bike! That is only for the masochists’ masochists.

Carrying all the medical gear was enough (including a metal O2 cylinder and reg; luckily nothing was used). I took up so much space that I couldn’t bring my real camera gear!

I’ll be hiking Gray’s with my bike on my back next season for sure. Just another awesome challenge for a bike race. Probably have it along on other peaks for training too.

My wife and I laughed that after finishing the leadville 100 MTB race in 9:53 on Saturday that I would have had a solid 14 hours to go at Montazumas!

I’ll see you up top next year then! :-)

I’ve received suggestions that I should put up these pictures in the trip report forum. Should I?

Heck yeah! People would love to see these images in that spot too!

Stunning photos- thank you!