Ever since I had moved to Colorado, there is a peak that my eyes were always drawn to. This peak is Sawtooth Mountain and it looks like it's named. Since I first saw it I wanted to climb it, and I was excited when my friend visited and wanted to as well. So we made a quick plan with my gf and decided to climb it the next morning. I wanted to get out early to be off the summit by noon so we wouldn't run into any of the thunderstorms that frequent the summer. Well, that didn't happen. We woke up about 9, and I got my stuff ready.
I always carry a pocket knife everywhere I go, but I was debating whether or not to bring my Ratmandu since we were just doing a day hike on a trail. So I ask my gf and she says "Absolutely!" (She is always excited about things that I'm interested in, which is more than any man can ask for). The drive to the trailhead is about an hour away even though I can see the peak from my balcony; The hike was quoted to be about 16 miles RT, but later I found it to be a little more like 14.
We get to the trailhead and its actually a 4x4 road for the first 4 miles or so. Its relatively flat, with some ups and downs here and there; we were walking through a forest so we couldn't really see past 20ft or so in either direction...it was nice, but it definitely got old. We came to a break in the trees and found this pretty pond by a campsite.
A little further and we happen to walk up upon this moose. It doesn't seem to be too spooked that we were there.
This is the area that the 4x4 trail ended and we took up the buchanan pass trail, which takes us right to the side of Sawtooth and over the Continental Divide. This was about 3 miles in, and our mountain still looks painfully far away.
My friend that was with us hikes way faster than we do and he got to see these moose; a mother with her babies. He actually got pissed that we scared them away, but hey...you can't get mad at us for something we had no idea was going on.
The trail we are hiking isn't really strenuous, but its paved with loose rocks about the size of baseballs so it was starting to hurt my feet. We hiked through a couple streams and over a few snow fields. The views were gorgeous!
We are getting near the mountain and we start hearing thunder. Dammit! There's no way I have come this far only to turn back. I'm prepared to take shelter and continue when appropriate, especially since we just passed treeline.
So I yell to my friend who is about 150 yards away. "We need to find shelter!!" The clouds are starting to get darker and the wind is starting to pick up. He yells back saying hes going to keep going "Its sunny on the other side!". I later find out that he thought I wanted to turn back. So I look up at the sky and monitor it for about 10 seconds to see which way the storm is moving. I was a land surveyor for a while and have become fairly good at judging storms. I find that its moving south just east of us and will pass. The gamble is on what we can't see over the mountains to the north. So we keep moving.
My gf is getting really tired, and shes starting to feel like she can't breathe well. She spent 3 months in Houston, TX for an internship and hasn't even been back a week; the altitude is starting to take effect on her. "Come on girl, you can do this we're almost there!". She hasn't been drinking enough water or eating food, plus her hiking boots are a little too small and her toes are jamming. Not good.
I can now hear thunder coming from the other side of the mountain to the north so I know a storm is brewing. But were almost there!! So we press on. My friend is now already on the summit, but we are still about half a mile or so away.
For scale, zoom in on the snow field...I am the dot in the center at the bottom.
We make it to the pass and start our ascent of Sawtooth. Here we are almost to the top (This is the continental divide)
WOOOOOOOO!!!! We Made it!! This is a candid photo taken by my friend.
At the top there is a stone Kiva thats nice to get in to get out of the wind. It was cold and my friend didn't think to bring anything warm, he's only in a T-shirt. We get in the Kiva and pop open our Sawtooth Beers.
BOOOOOOOMMMM!!......."Crap...."
We all stand up and look north. Not good. We see dark clouds brewing up around Longs Peak, and then it gets struck by lightning. I say "Guys, we need to start moving". My friend says "Well, we have time to eat and drink our beer", "No we Don't! We need to get below treeline now!! Lets move!" So we get up and start moving while more lightning strikes Longs. That's when our "Oh Sh**" moment happened. We start hauling ass down the mountainside, which isn't easy because its littered with holes and boulders everywhere. Careful foot placement was crucial. I'm super proud of my gf for making it to 12,304ft from sea level, and for making it despite all the pain she's having...but right now I really need her to move as fast as she can. So I'm running in front of her to keep her pace swift, while stopping frequently to let her catch up.
We reach the pass and it starts raining on us, which makes the dirt and rocks on our path slippery. Ahhh, this is the steepest part that we have to traverse and now its treacherous! My friend I can see has almost made it to treeline, but we were still really high on the mountain. So we start hitting the switchbacks as fast as possible and even skip some of the corners. Then, when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it starts hailing. Thousands of quarter-sized ice balls start falling from the sky and hit us in the head. I look back to my gf and wish I had a camera, the sight was amazing...not in a good way, and not necessarily terrible, but it was an amazing shot of human emotion. Hail was showering down around her, and bouncing 2 feet up from the ground while she was in a full sprint. Worry was the only thing her face conveyed. "Come on baby! We're almost there, we've got this!"
We finally make it to treeline just as the hail stops, and the sky looks like its clearing up. I find my friend off to the side trying to make a fire because he is freezing. He wasn't able to start it up because everything was damp and we were pretty high up.
We start the long hike back.
We end up losing my friend again, he is way ahead of us. I know he likes to walk fast, but we are now walking as fast as we can; Sprinting down the mountain has really killed my knee and my gf's toes are killing her. I'm thinking its really important to keep together at this point but theres nothing I can do about it now. All the way back to the '3 mile' point my friend is nowhere to be seen. We finally come across him standing by another persons fire. We stop and chat with the person for a couple minutes and he offers all of us hot chocolate which was really nice. I keep pressing to move on, for its getting dark and we have another 3 miles to hike. So we start moving again. It finally gets dark and I reach into my pack and notice that my flashlight isn't there. Oh yea, I took it out last week to find something. Good thing my friend had one, because it was pitch black out there, and there was no one around.
It took us a couple of hours to get back to the car from that point. I sucked up the excruciating pain in my knee so I could help my gf walk the rest of the way. We made it to the car at 10pm. I learned something that day. No matter if its just a trail or not, I need to always be prepared. I didn't end up needing my knife that day, but I can definitely understand how a situation could come up easily where I would need to construct shelter and a fire. Had my friend not had that light, we couldn't have made it back and we would have had to set up camp for the night. We didn't plan on being out there til 10...
Sh** happens, it really does. Always be prepared.
-Traverse
I always carry a pocket knife everywhere I go, but I was debating whether or not to bring my Ratmandu since we were just doing a day hike on a trail. So I ask my gf and she says "Absolutely!" (She is always excited about things that I'm interested in, which is more than any man can ask for). The drive to the trailhead is about an hour away even though I can see the peak from my balcony; The hike was quoted to be about 16 miles RT, but later I found it to be a little more like 14.
We get to the trailhead and its actually a 4x4 road for the first 4 miles or so. Its relatively flat, with some ups and downs here and there; we were walking through a forest so we couldn't really see past 20ft or so in either direction...it was nice, but it definitely got old. We came to a break in the trees and found this pretty pond by a campsite.
A little further and we happen to walk up upon this moose. It doesn't seem to be too spooked that we were there.
This is the area that the 4x4 trail ended and we took up the buchanan pass trail, which takes us right to the side of Sawtooth and over the Continental Divide. This was about 3 miles in, and our mountain still looks painfully far away.
My friend that was with us hikes way faster than we do and he got to see these moose; a mother with her babies. He actually got pissed that we scared them away, but hey...you can't get mad at us for something we had no idea was going on.
The trail we are hiking isn't really strenuous, but its paved with loose rocks about the size of baseballs so it was starting to hurt my feet. We hiked through a couple streams and over a few snow fields. The views were gorgeous!
We are getting near the mountain and we start hearing thunder. Dammit! There's no way I have come this far only to turn back. I'm prepared to take shelter and continue when appropriate, especially since we just passed treeline.
So I yell to my friend who is about 150 yards away. "We need to find shelter!!" The clouds are starting to get darker and the wind is starting to pick up. He yells back saying hes going to keep going "Its sunny on the other side!". I later find out that he thought I wanted to turn back. So I look up at the sky and monitor it for about 10 seconds to see which way the storm is moving. I was a land surveyor for a while and have become fairly good at judging storms. I find that its moving south just east of us and will pass. The gamble is on what we can't see over the mountains to the north. So we keep moving.
My gf is getting really tired, and shes starting to feel like she can't breathe well. She spent 3 months in Houston, TX for an internship and hasn't even been back a week; the altitude is starting to take effect on her. "Come on girl, you can do this we're almost there!". She hasn't been drinking enough water or eating food, plus her hiking boots are a little too small and her toes are jamming. Not good.
I can now hear thunder coming from the other side of the mountain to the north so I know a storm is brewing. But were almost there!! So we press on. My friend is now already on the summit, but we are still about half a mile or so away.
For scale, zoom in on the snow field...I am the dot in the center at the bottom.
We make it to the pass and start our ascent of Sawtooth. Here we are almost to the top (This is the continental divide)
WOOOOOOOO!!!! We Made it!! This is a candid photo taken by my friend.
At the top there is a stone Kiva thats nice to get in to get out of the wind. It was cold and my friend didn't think to bring anything warm, he's only in a T-shirt. We get in the Kiva and pop open our Sawtooth Beers.
BOOOOOOOMMMM!!......."Crap...."
We all stand up and look north. Not good. We see dark clouds brewing up around Longs Peak, and then it gets struck by lightning. I say "Guys, we need to start moving". My friend says "Well, we have time to eat and drink our beer", "No we Don't! We need to get below treeline now!! Lets move!" So we get up and start moving while more lightning strikes Longs. That's when our "Oh Sh**" moment happened. We start hauling ass down the mountainside, which isn't easy because its littered with holes and boulders everywhere. Careful foot placement was crucial. I'm super proud of my gf for making it to 12,304ft from sea level, and for making it despite all the pain she's having...but right now I really need her to move as fast as she can. So I'm running in front of her to keep her pace swift, while stopping frequently to let her catch up.
We reach the pass and it starts raining on us, which makes the dirt and rocks on our path slippery. Ahhh, this is the steepest part that we have to traverse and now its treacherous! My friend I can see has almost made it to treeline, but we were still really high on the mountain. So we start hitting the switchbacks as fast as possible and even skip some of the corners. Then, when we thought it couldn't get any worse, it starts hailing. Thousands of quarter-sized ice balls start falling from the sky and hit us in the head. I look back to my gf and wish I had a camera, the sight was amazing...not in a good way, and not necessarily terrible, but it was an amazing shot of human emotion. Hail was showering down around her, and bouncing 2 feet up from the ground while she was in a full sprint. Worry was the only thing her face conveyed. "Come on baby! We're almost there, we've got this!"
We finally make it to treeline just as the hail stops, and the sky looks like its clearing up. I find my friend off to the side trying to make a fire because he is freezing. He wasn't able to start it up because everything was damp and we were pretty high up.
We start the long hike back.
We end up losing my friend again, he is way ahead of us. I know he likes to walk fast, but we are now walking as fast as we can; Sprinting down the mountain has really killed my knee and my gf's toes are killing her. I'm thinking its really important to keep together at this point but theres nothing I can do about it now. All the way back to the '3 mile' point my friend is nowhere to be seen. We finally come across him standing by another persons fire. We stop and chat with the person for a couple minutes and he offers all of us hot chocolate which was really nice. I keep pressing to move on, for its getting dark and we have another 3 miles to hike. So we start moving again. It finally gets dark and I reach into my pack and notice that my flashlight isn't there. Oh yea, I took it out last week to find something. Good thing my friend had one, because it was pitch black out there, and there was no one around.
It took us a couple of hours to get back to the car from that point. I sucked up the excruciating pain in my knee so I could help my gf walk the rest of the way. We made it to the car at 10pm. I learned something that day. No matter if its just a trail or not, I need to always be prepared. I didn't end up needing my knife that day, but I can definitely understand how a situation could come up easily where I would need to construct shelter and a fire. Had my friend not had that light, we couldn't have made it back and we would have had to set up camp for the night. We didn't plan on being out there til 10...
Sh** happens, it really does. Always be prepared.
-Traverse
