This was my 2nd attempt to hike to the summit of Buffalo. The description of the 1st attempt can be seen here
Unlike the first attempt, this attempt was successful. Also unlike the first attempt, we left from our house, making for a much longer hike.
I did not take detailed notes as we were fighting for time trying to beat the daily thunderstorms. In fact we only spent 20 minutes or so on the summit.
We left our house at 7:05 am and took the route indicated in the image
below:
The profile of the hike was:
As you can see from the profile, the real climb started after the point called JCT1 or about 2.5 miles in.
I took one of my pictures of Buffalo from across the valley on Ptarmigan
and approximately overlaid the hike onto it:
In this picture, I tried to color code the difficulty of the hike for a fat old man like me. The first portion of the hike was basically from our house to the cabins and is easy. Then after the cabins, the trail gets steep and you enter the smaller of the two distinct avalanche shoots. From here through what is colored red, the steepness is the same. The yellow part is in the new growth of trees, and the trail is on soil that is not too slippery. When the color turns to red, you have left the trees behind, and the soil is sandy and very slippery. When you attain the ridge at the end of the red, the incline slacks off some and the footing is more firm. As you climb this last meadow, you reach a scree field which will take you up to the summit.
We reached the summit at about 11:20, and because of the weather left at 11:40. The summit is a narrow ridge from the scree field to the top of what I call the caldara, but this mountain, of course, has no volcanic history. The topo shows there should have been a bench mark, but I was unable to find it.
I did not get too many pictures. We scrambled back down as quickly as we could, and reached home at about 2:15. The rain was not much later.
Here are some pictures from the summit:
Don and Mike
John and Mike
A view of our house cleverly camouflaged in the woods.
Looking over to Red Mountain
Towards Red - Buffalo Pass
Looking back towards Denver. Grays and Torries can be seen on the right.
This page last updated July 19, 2001