071002 Grey’s Peak

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On Tuesday, the 2nd, Seaver and I had the bright idea to hike Grey’s and Torrey’s peaks about 50 miles west of Denver. Once off of I-70 the road immediately turned rugged and we could see snow on the peaks. I didn’t realize it would be as cold as it was. Along the three mile 4x4 only road flecks of snow drifted across the hood of Seaver’s Tacoma. Once at the trailhead the wind was blowing a bit, but we were determined to attempt the summit despite gnawing fears of doubt at the cold and wind. I had a long sleeve shirt, a fleece, a jacket, and a beanie on. Seaver had about the same but he was smart enough to bring gloves.

The trailhead was at about 12,000 feet and I could feel it pretty quickly. I counted and at one point was only able to take 400 paces before I had to stop and catch my breath. After about an hour of hiking pretty steadily uphill I was a little more adjusted to the altitude. Then we really started to climb and the snow went from being about 3-4 inches to drifts of about two feet.

There was a couple ahead of us that we could see in the distance, their tracks in the snow began disappearing as the wind began blowing harder and harder the higher we climbed. In the second image you should be able to see Grey’s peak, but the wind was blowing the snow, so we couldn’t see it. As we were about midpoint on the image we saw the people coming back toward us. They said the wind was blowing too hard and they were quitting. They had better gear than we did, but we were determined to try anyway. As we got to the spot they turned around at we learned why they turned around. At the point in the second image where it starts to become obscured by the snow was a little saddle of the hill and Grey’s Peak the wind was howling down, driving the snow into us. We had to turn around to avoid wind-burn and then it just pummeled our back. We made it to a sunny spot but the wind blew harder there. The back of my neck was going numb and the cold was driving right through our clothes.

Neither of us were too proud to admit defeat so we turned around and headed back down. By the time we got down to the truck it had pretty much cleared up, we could see the peaks…oh well. We said we’d try it again later in the week. It looks like if we had waited about two hours it would have been fine, but in the early morning the sun didn’t have a chance to clear out the clouds and wind.

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Photos

Mountainside
Can you see the peak up there? Us either.