| |
| Round Top Mountain & Peak 10175, CO | | -
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
| 1 label |  |
|
|
-
-
-
-
|
| | Round Top Mountain & Peak 10175, CO | | | |
|
|
Round Top Mountain & Peak 10175, CO
| | |
|
| Hiking | 5.20 Miles |
1,541 AEG |
| | Hiking | 5.20 Miles | 3 Hrs 14 Mns | | 1.79 mph |
| 1,541 ft AEG | 20 Mns Break | 20 LBS Pack | | |
|
|
| |
| Linked |
|
none
[ show ]
| no linked trail guides |
| Partners |
|
[ show ]
| partners | | Prior to this trip I had a list of 25 mapped hikes from which we would choose day-by-day depending on weather, terrain, elevation gain, current local beta and most importantly how well we coped with higher altitudes.
Spoiler... surprisingly, altitude turned out to be of no importance, as neither of us would notice anything related to it.
Colorado Trip September 2022
Day #1 Hike #1
Round Top Mountain & Peak 10175
Round Top Mountain - 10,180' St Charles Peak Quadrangle
Not sure whether we'd have issues with higher altitudes, for the first hike we chose a reasonably short hike in the 10K elevation range which also happened to be the closest to the Air BnB where we were staying. (A dozen miles east of Westcliffe, CO)
And wouldn't you know it, the first hike would be our ONLY hike of the trip which would NOT be on a trail at all. Whoops! I guess I didn't clue Tracey in on that fact ahead of time.
But no matter, for the first part we just hiked up Forest Road 321 until turning east and beginning the off-trail ascent. I had expected there would be game trails to follow but due to such a poor recovery from a fire in not-too-distant past only a few bits of formerly well-used trails were still in evidence. Oh well, we'll just catch-as-catch-can and zig-zag as elk would have done on the steepest sections.
We were well south of the summit upon reaching the ridge, and although there a couple ok views, we wasted little time heading for the summit. Pretty much as expected, the views at the summit were pretty much non-existent... just trees all around. At the summit was a group of large boulders, one which was marked with an inscription "CN-AM" (the A above the M) and the date "11-2-35"
While there was an old torn rusty can which may have held a summit log at one time, none was present.
One peak down, one more to go.
Peak 10,175 - Deer Peak Quadrangle
From Round Top we hiked westward along FR 321, where we met a couple hunters, chatting just long enough to find out it was muzzle-loader season and so far they had no luck. We continued on along FR 321 its western terminus before beginning our ascent of 10175.
Big mistake! Although I had mapped out the ascent route up a ridge directly from the last intersection, I must have been in robot mode, following the road instead of my GPS route. Adding a maybe a quarter-mile extra wasn't a big deal, the terrain WAS. It was much steeper than Round Top, the vegetation was much thicker, lots of thistles along with section of soft, loose ground. Sure, there were elk tracks, but we weren't elk.
Once on flatter ground we followed not only elk tracks but those of the two hunters we had chatted with. Easy going now? Nope... tons of deadfall meant we were constantly climbing over, ducking under or bypassing a hash of dead trees, looking much like the game "pick-up-sticks" from my childhood days. Eventually we reached the summit, and similar to Round Top, no summit log, just broken glass jar and no views due to trees all around.
Ok, second peak done, time to head back, albeit this time sticking closer to my originally planned GPS route. Yup, it was MUCH easier than our ascent. But we soon veered off to follow some VERY fresh elk trails with hopes of spotting a few, if not a whole herd. No such luck so we just reconnected with FR 321 and followed it all the way back to where we had parked.
Even with a few steep climbs, at just over 5 miles and 10k elevations we didn't had no elevation issues, information we'd use when choosing the hikes for the rest of the week.
Yup, far too short a hike so we decided to check out a trail we saw a sign for on the drive out... somehow it was not on my hikes to-choose-from list. (We'd find out why in an hour or so) |
| _____________________
| | |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Route Editor
Route Scout
