We made it to the summit at 14172 feet above sea level.
We left the house before 6am, and were at the trailhead by 7. We made it to the summit at around 11 am, and were back to the car by 2:30pm.
This day we thought Mike was hiking Quandary with his personal trainer,
Frank Mencin, but Frank pulled a fast one, and Mike actually did 3 fourteeners
in one hike:
Democrat, Lincoln and Bross (as well as the unofficial Camron). I am
nagging him to write up his hike as well as his map. But you can see what
I have put together for him here.
As of this writing, here is the scorecard of fourteeners:
Don: 3
Marina: 1
Michael: 5 (counting Camron)
David: 1
I could not find the USGS marker, nor a book to sign in at the summit.
As with all hikes this time of year, the wildflowers were out in force. Pictures and discussion can be found here.
First a map showing the hike as well as the route out of Alma to the trailhead:
And the 2nd is a distilled version of what the gps plotted:
I say distilled, as there were some rough edges in what the gps gave to me.
Here is the profile:
Even though we had a 4 wheel drive vehicle, we parked at the end of the 2 wheel drive road. Strangely enough, we were the only car there when we started and when we finished.
Here is a view of the gentle Bross from where we parked:
The hike basically follows the ridge on the top right of the picture.
For most of the hike we were on a 4WD road. And indeed we saw a number of cars on the road making the climb. One car had a pair of skiers who drove up to a snow field and then climbed for about an hour for a couple of turns. Another car was semi-abandoned, with no spare and no front driver's side tire. It was jacked up. There were only about 4 other vehicles.
Unlike Quandary and Bierstadt, this mountain was relatively deserted.
The start of the hike is just below tree-line, and tree line is quickly obtained. You pass an area designated for observation of the 1000 year old Bristle Pine Trees, which are the last variety of pine before tree line.
The hike continues pleasently through switch-backs, passing an old set of buildings at about 12,400 feet.
This being mining country, I figured black and white was best for showing
buildings.
Continuing on, one reaches the Dolly Varden mine. At this point we took
a minor wrong turn, and left the main road. We went through the remains
of the mine, which included a fairly in-tact water tank made of wood in
a barrel fashion.
It was a good thing that the dogs were leashed as we found a porcupine sleeping in the ruins.
Climbing out of the mine, we continued towards the "Moose Mine" indicated on the map, re-joining the main road. It was at this point we found the skiers.
Continuing on, as we left the skiers, we decided to leave the road as well and started to bushwack up towards the peak. We did a rejoin of a branch of the road for a bit. This was the steepest part of the climb going up. We reached the summit at around 11 am. The summit is very wide and flat. A rescue helicopter made for high altidude would have no trouble landing.
Here are some pictures from the top. We met a some people who took our pictures, so I took one of them to include:
And here is a picture of us on top:
Mt. Lincoln is in the background (above David's head).
We left the summit after lunch, and started our decsent toward's the
south. This side of the mountain has much more skree than the West-NorthWest
side which is what we came up on. I would not recommend this as the means
of ascent or descent. We eventually re-joined the road we came up on and
re-traced our steps down.
This page last updated July 17, 2001