Yet Another Mountain Adventure

We try to pack as much into Mike's two day weekend as possible, literally. Thursday morning we began each day as we usually do, this is the part where you all repeat...bike ride. Yes, we went for a short mountain bike ride. then we went to pick up our car from the shop and Mike proceeded to go put together his bike at the shop, surprise, surprise. I got home and began packing for our mountaineering expedition we were leaving for in the afternoon. After Mike had gotten back and lunch was eaten, we packed up the jeep and headed for Breckenridge. It rained on and off while we were there.

We kind of walked around and had some fun, mostly looking for a restaurant where we wanted to eat dinner.
Finally, out of sheer hunger, we just chose a place. They were still having happy our, which was two for one appetizers, so we just ordered appetizers. A huge heaping plate of nachos, and...
Something like sushi. It was tuna on fried wonton rolls with seaweed and wasabi sauce. It was delicious.

Now sufficiently stuffed with food to get us through tomorrow, we headed to little Alma, CO, about 15miles south of Breck to camp out for the night at the kite lake trailhead, at the base of four 14ers.

We were able to set up a little campsite secluded in some trees with a little fire down the road from the trailhead.

That is one nice thing about camping, you usually go to bed early since you can't see a darn thing. Good thing too because it was so windy that we didn't sleep much. Thankfully we were sheltered in the trees, but it was still so loud! I don't even know what time we woke up, but we quickly packed up and headed to the trailhead about 1-2miles up the road. We'd been hearing cars go by all morning so we didn't want to not be able to park up there. Here is us about to start on a huge adventure! In one day we are going to hike 3 14ers!

It was still really windy, and the wind was cold! We were hiking the 14ers, Democrat, Lincoln, and Cameron, and then passing by Bross because the summit isn't open to the public. We were exhausted for some reason and were really having a hard go of it. The wind didn't help either and we met people coming down who said they turned around because of the wind, but we kept on trucking. This pic is us almost up to the summit of Mount Democrat, we are at a saddle below the peak. the wind was sheltered here, so it was a great place to warm up.
Here we are on the peak of Mount Democrat! I tried to be all slick and make signs for each 14er listing the name, elevation, and date, but you can't even read it! Note to you all, use a black sharpie, not a blue one!! But anyway, my sign says, Mt. Democrat, elev. 14,148ft, Aug. 13, 2010.
It was pretty crazy from that peak on. Fueled by summiting one peak, we knew we had to finish them all. So we headed out, to the next horrible three hours ahead of us!
The next peak was cameron, we didn't even stop to take a photo because the wind was so bad you felt like you were going to be picked up and given flight off the mountain. Mike is leaning over and the wind is totally holding you up! I guess this is our summit picture.
You can see mount Lincoln in the back of this pic, that is the peak we are heading to next.
On top of mt lincoln, note the retarded sign you can't read. It says Mt. Lincoln, Elev. 14, 286ft, Aug 13, 2010. It was so windy up there too that we hurried down. By this time, we were exhausted and windblown.
That wind will take everything out of you! We were frozen and the inside of our heads felt frozen from the wind. It was gusting so bad that you had to keep your arms inside your body, hugged to your chest so the wind had less to catch on and pull you over or down. The route we took was a loop around the 4 peaks and if it hadn't have been, I'm sure we would have turned around, but we couldn't we had to just keep going on ahead, see map here.

In this photo I am on top of an unknown peak that looks nothing like Bross, that is all I'm saying.
I can't tell you how ready we were to be heading down. And down it was! A very steep grade down. I think I spent more time walking sideways to keep from sliding down the hill on my behind than I spent studying for my last Chemistry exam.


It was funny though, the further we got down, and the more we warmed up, we started talking about other mountains to hike. Funny because I kid you not, on the top of these mountains I was cursing myself for ever coming up with this idea and swearing never to hike another 14er in my life.
A pretty little waterfall near the bottom.

We were almost giddy when we got back down because we were so excited to be done!
After shot. Our 14er count is now thus: Sara, 8; Michael, 6.
Of course i'm sure you can guess the next thing we did was...get some food! We drove back to breck and ate at a place called Fatty's. Unfortunately, there food is not noteworthy and we don't suggest it, but it was food and it got us home, to where we laid around, ate cereal, and watched movies for the rest of the evening. I do love adventures, and I love being married to an adventurous man!