Shortly after getting the news of The Sigvard Eklund Prize I wanted to go somewhere fun and preferable combine it with some highpointing. The highest point I had ever been to before was Mt Fuji, Japan. So I was looking a bit extra at those peaks that are above 4000M since that would then be clearly higher than what I had visited previously. Colorado's Mount Elbert offers a nice altitude, convenient location from a bigger town (Denver) and within driving distance one can visit some other states high points so the trip ended up being Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas, with some driving through Wyoming on the way.
I drove to Leadville (after some silly address mistake in the GPS) where I found the motel I had booked for the night, Leadville is also known as the 2mile high ciy, and the highest city in US, sleeping there a few short hours after going to bed at 3am turned out to bu quite straining from the change in altitude, but I woke up starving and with a desire to see some gorgeous nature and the weather was looking promising. I had chosen to take the Black Cloud trail which is quite less frequented compared to the Colorado train and the south or north Mt. Elbert trail. The vistas was early magnificent, after a star spangled night with temperatures below the freezing point. Below is a view of La Plata Peak to the south.
The trail was well maintained and kept in forested areas for quite a while due to a very high tree line. It later started doing some switchbacks and became more and more rocky, however it never really deviated form the Class 1 rating it had been given in the guidebook I was reading.
The sheer altitude, elevation gain and distance meant that it took quite some time to reach the top, while also getting more and more short of breath. The sun kept shining though, and was amazingly good. The rail went over the south Mt. Elbert peak which is over 14000 feet, thus I imagined that once I had reached that it would be a very simple last part, that turned out to be not quite correct since the saddle between the 2 peaks went down quite a bit. With the main peak in sight and nice white snow that was lying around in scattered patterns from a snowfall earlier in the autumn, it was easy to find the needed motivation to go the last bit.
Once on the top views were fantastic, although getting more and more symptoms of Acute mountain sickness (AMS) I only took a minor rest on the peak, and then turned back since I had to re-climb up to South Elbert peak before doing the main decent. But a bunch of celebratory shorts on the top was naturally taken:
One thing That make me really grateful for the time of year I had chosen to climb was the magnificent autumn aspen colors. The hills were lit up by bright yellow patches of aspen trees.
The height do demand some acclimatization and spending a few days in Colorado will surely help, gaining 13 600 feet in less than 20h is on the low side and required a quick decent to make sure that loss of hunger headache and nausea don't become more severe problems, if they do present themselves and get worse, do keep in mind that the prudent thing to do is to decent to lower safe altitudes to reverse the high altitude sickness!
Stats:
State: Colorado
High point: Mount Elbert
Elevation: 14440 ft (4401 m)
Date: 25 September, 2010
Total elevation to date: 28682 ft (8742 m)
Access: Trail (11.0 miles, 5300feet elevation diff. about 7h)
Difficulty rating (of 10): 7
Potential Difficulties: AMS (acute mountain sickness) when lacking sufficient acclimatization.
I drove to Leadville (after some silly address mistake in the GPS) where I found the motel I had booked for the night, Leadville is also known as the 2mile high ciy, and the highest city in US, sleeping there a few short hours after going to bed at 3am turned out to bu quite straining from the change in altitude, but I woke up starving and with a desire to see some gorgeous nature and the weather was looking promising. I had chosen to take the Black Cloud trail which is quite less frequented compared to the Colorado train and the south or north Mt. Elbert trail. The vistas was early magnificent, after a star spangled night with temperatures below the freezing point. Below is a view of La Plata Peak to the south.
The trail was well maintained and kept in forested areas for quite a while due to a very high tree line. It later started doing some switchbacks and became more and more rocky, however it never really deviated form the Class 1 rating it had been given in the guidebook I was reading.
The sheer altitude, elevation gain and distance meant that it took quite some time to reach the top, while also getting more and more short of breath. The sun kept shining though, and was amazingly good. The rail went over the south Mt. Elbert peak which is over 14000 feet, thus I imagined that once I had reached that it would be a very simple last part, that turned out to be not quite correct since the saddle between the 2 peaks went down quite a bit. With the main peak in sight and nice white snow that was lying around in scattered patterns from a snowfall earlier in the autumn, it was easy to find the needed motivation to go the last bit.
Once on the top views were fantastic, although getting more and more symptoms of Acute mountain sickness (AMS) I only took a minor rest on the peak, and then turned back since I had to re-climb up to South Elbert peak before doing the main decent. But a bunch of celebratory shorts on the top was naturally taken:
The height do demand some acclimatization and spending a few days in Colorado will surely help, gaining 13 600 feet in less than 20h is on the low side and required a quick decent to make sure that loss of hunger headache and nausea don't become more severe problems, if they do present themselves and get worse, do keep in mind that the prudent thing to do is to decent to lower safe altitudes to reverse the high altitude sickness!
Stats:
State: Colorado
High point: Mount Elbert
Elevation: 14440 ft (4401 m)
Date: 25 September, 2010
Total elevation to date: 28682 ft (8742 m)
Access: Trail (11.0 miles, 5300feet elevation diff. about 7h)
Difficulty rating (of 10): 7
Potential Difficulties: AMS (acute mountain sickness) when lacking sufficient acclimatization.
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