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Base Camp
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- Statistics:
- Date Hiked: August 12, 2005
- Miles Hiked: 7.6
- Elevation Gain: 3,000'
- Hiking Partner(s): Dan Robbins,
Rick Lutz
- Description:
- Dan woke at 5:30 and reported more overcast
skies. I was still tired,
so I told him we should give it another hour.
He agreed. Neither
one of us really slept any more after Dan’s initial weather check, so
I got up at 6:10 to take another look.
I thought it was relatively clear and told Dan he must be on
drugs. In his defense, things
had improved in the past 40 minutes, so we hastily emptied the cabin, loaded our vehicles,
and headed up to the 4WD Nellie Creek Trailhead.
The weather only improved as we approached the beginning of our
hike.
- We certainly weren’t the first individuals on
the trail, but we didn’t care. It
looked like it was actually going to be a beautiful day, and we
only had 3,000’ to climb. We
were going to hike leisurely and enjoy our “rest day”.
We emerged from the trees after a short time and caught our first
views of Uncompahgre. It is
an impressive looking mountain. We
quickly passed a large group of female hikers and decided to take 10
after an hour of hiking. On
our break, a lone hiker approached us making excellent time.
As he got closer, I had to ask, “Rick?”
In fact it was Rick Lutz whom I had just met on the summit of San
Luis Peak three days prior. He
had spent the past two days getting cabin fever in Lake City.
- Rick, Dan, and I finished the uneventful hike to
Uncompahgre Peak where we enjoyed ourselves for over an hour.
I made the summit in 2 hours and 15 minutes.
Several parties began to arrive as we basked in the sun and took
in the views. On the descent, I decided to scramble up a couple of
pinnacles and small points along the route to gain the additional 130’
needed to bring the cumulative gain to 3,000’.
As I was doing this, Dan went ahead and decided to pick up his
extra feet on a ridge towards Point 13158.
This point is an interesting looking fin to the southeast of
Uncompahgre.
- I failed to see Dan break off the trail on his
scouting excursion as I was scrambling to a couple more points near the
trail. Anyway, I ended up
hiking out with Rick assuming Dan was well ahead of us although he
wasn’t. Once reunited at
the trailhead, we high tailed it over to the Matterhorn Creek Trailhead
to set up camp for one more night.
In order to determine how long it would take to get to the upper
trailhead, we decided to drive up and time it.
Dan was fairly impressed with the performance of my Trooper, and
the rough 2.6 miles took us 25 minutes. We set the alarm for
5:15 am so that we could be hiking by 6:00 am the next morning.
- Maps:
- Click
here to view a 2D
map of the area where this hike is located.
- Photographs:
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