Mt Elbert is the tallest peak in the state at 14,433 and what better way to spend a weekend in February than slogging through snow and braving the cold!
We got ourselves out of town on Saturday way ahead of the ski traffic (5:45am!) and aimed for Leadville and the Golden Burro as our first destination. There we demolished a huge breakfast before carrying on to the South Elbert Trailhead.
It was a cool day, not cold (yet) and we were all in pretty good spirits as we got geared up and ready to go. Round trip it’s 11.2 miles and 4,800ft of elevation gain which makes for a decent trip. The plan was to hike up to treeline on Saturday, camp there and then summit on Sunday and return home.
 Me grinning like an idiot, I can’t help it when I’m in the mountains!
 Ania and I at the trailhead
 Joe, Me, Ania, and Rob at the trailhead (not shown is Kevin and Sherry)
The first section of trail was decent and in the summer time it’s a 4×4 road that would cut a few miles off of our journey. It was well packed and we winged up it pretty easily.
 My pack, camera bag on this side and snowshoes strapped to the other.Â
 I know…. but sometimes you just have to take these shots!
 Joe, Ania and Kevin coming up the trail
 Rob with his old-school external-frame pack
Before long we hit the “official” trailhead where the 4×4 road ends and it wasn’t far past that where the snow finally got soft on us and we had to strap on the snowshoes.
 Difficulties with the hated Tubbs snowhoes
The trail was good though and Kevin and I took turns breaking trail and building switchbacks as we neared the meadow where we were to camp that night.
 More difficulties!
 Sherry on the final ridge to the campsite
Rob on the final ridge to the campsite
 Kevin taking a break in the shadows
Joe on the final ridge to the campsite
The meadow at treeline was a really well sheltered place with a lot of great campsites. We worked our way across it and to a point where we could jump right past treeline the next morning and be on the way to the summit without much fooling around.
We pulled into camp around 3:00 pm and started to get things set up. When I was packing the night before I had no qualms about “stretching” the season on my light two-man 3-season tent, but that thinking wasn’t quite as valid when I saw how much of it was mesh!
 Our camp with Kevin in all his layered glory
I took advantage of the remaining light and did a hasty search of the meadow looking for some nice snowy areas and found a great spot that was up to my hips or so deep. The temperature was definitely dropping and what better way to stay warm than working hard? Yup, I started diggin me a hole! A deep one too, I got down to ground level before long and then dug horizontal for a while creating a short entrance tunnel. Once that was perfect bodysize Istarted digging at a right angle to it and opening up some space to create a pocket inside. After a solid two hours of digging I had myself a decently sized snowcave for the night! Unfortunately the snow wasn’t deep enough to build it tall enough to sit up in so I had a lot of squirming to do and things like getting boots off would prove difficult!
The entrance to my cave, with a bit of a mess around it.
As the sun fell and we started to cook dinner (freeze dried Jamacian Chicken mmm) the temperature absolutely plummeted! I had on three layers on the lower body, five on my upper body, two on my hands and 4 on my head; and I was still cold! Dinner was cooked and eaten in a frenzy and then it was into the cave and the refuge of my sleeping bagby 7:30pm or so. I would have loved to stay up and stargaze but it was just way too cold!
The sleep that night was great, quiet dark and completely sheltered from the elements in a way that my mesh tent definitely wouldn’t have offered. I did toss and turn a little and woke up shivering a few times that night. At 2am I popped outside to take care of business and it was unbelievably cold! I would estimate -20C or so… serioously, really cold, crawling back up the tunnel to my cave the temperature probably jumped 5-7 degrees.
In a fit of optimism I had hoped to summit for sunrise on Sunday morning but with the temperatures the way they were I was reluctant to get out of bed at 4am. At 6am I rolled out of bed and got myself moving, if only to generate heat! Everyone else had a good sleep and reported lots of wind which I hadn’t noticed at all in my sanctuary.
We got ourselves rolling aroun 7:30 or 8:00 and kept a steady pace up Mt. Elbert. It isn’t much in the way of a technical climb, it’s a walk-up for sure but being there in winter made it really interesting. I broke trail again and just followed the obvious route up the ridge and past the tantalizing false summit to the real summit in around 3hrs, Ania and Joe were close behind me at about 4hrs from camp.
At the summit the winds were fast and carrying lots of snow, the only word that really describes it is “miserable”. I dashed up to the summit, tagged the marker and dashed back down to the relative saftey of the false summit. I knew that Joe and Ania were close behind so a dug a small snow shelter with a rock and got out of the wind to enjoy a little tea while they grunted up the final slopes. Despite the temperature (-10 at least) and the blowing wind it was actually fairly decent up there, the sun was out and the view was amazing!
View from the summit
In my little protected area I actually dozed off a few times and probably caught 30min of sleep total while waiting for them (c: It was a great nap. They summited and we started back down with little ado. Joe and I attempted to glissadea few times but the snow wasn’t really packed enough for that so we just broke the surface all the time, what a rip! Next time I’ll take my crazy carpet with me (c:
We zipped down (~1hr) to camp and packed up and hiked out to the cars (~1hr again) in fading sunlight. Tired but happy we wrapped up the weekend with sandwiches and coffee in Buena Vista at a great place, the name of which totally eludes me right now.
All in all a really good experince and probably one of the coldest nights I have ever spent out of doors. The mountain was a good climb with an excellent view and relatively decent weather all things considered. The personal highlight for me was undoubtedly the snowcave, which I will definitely do again!
