10.2 miles round trip to summit of Mt. Elbert, elevation 14,440’
Wow, what a day … a very tough day! Today we got up early so we would have plenty of time to climb Mt. Elbert. We got going at 7:25 am and made short work of the 1.4 miles from our camp to the trailhead of the East (a.k.a. South) Route to Mt. Elbert. At 8:05 am we started climbing. The first quarter of the climb was through aspens and pine, then after about an hour we were above the treeline. Around 10 am we were only halfway and with a much tougher trail ahead of us. There was some light rain developing over the neighboring peaks but no sign of lightning. However, at one point a cloud came over us and dumped some pea-sized hail.
The trail was rocky, steep, and long. The entire route was only 3.5 miles, but they were some of the toughest miles we’d ever done. Finally, at 12:45 pm we summited Mt Elbert. Ellen wrote our names in the summit logbook and we took the obligatory summit picture with the sign. Nice to be on top of our corner of the world! It was surprisingly cold and very windy at the summit and since we found cell service we clumsily texted messages with cold fingers. We had planned on hiking a different (Northeast) route down the mountain but it looked steeper and definitely more exposed to the wind and weather and so we decided to go down the way we came.
We left the summit around 1:25 pm and made it back to the start at 4:20 pm. We still had to hike back to camp and around 5:10 pm we made it back. We were both exhausted and couldn’t wait to eat dinner, clean up, and get horizontal. And sure enough, by 6:15 pm we were both snug in our sleeping bags. We emerged the next morning almost 13 hours later! It was a very long day but very satisfying. We now have climbed the two highest peaks in the contiguous United States.
Journeys with Jeff and Ellen 