Bob Rayburn and I arranged to climb up to Gray's Peak (14,240') and the adjacent Torrey's Peak (14,267') the last weekend in June, where the chance of snow on the trail is likely to be minimal. Well, we were wrong. The late snows this season didn't melt away quite yet and provided us with some challenges we were unaware of when we started our journey.
Drove up to Bakersville off of I-70 to access Steven's Gulch Road with Bob, myself, and Bob's wife Jana. The plan was for Jana to drop off Bob and I at the bottom of the road, which is a 3 mile hike up to the trailhead leading to Gray's Peak, and Jana would drive up the road to the trailhead and hopefully we would catch up with her somewhere along the trail. Bob and I were initially running up the road, then it turned into a walk. Not long after, Jana came by. But just a few feet ahead, she stopped in the road due to a large washout. Unfortunately, Jana's SUV is not a 4WD, and there were cars parked just to the right of the washout, thereby blocking the only way around the huge washout. Bob offered to try to drive it through the rut, but the tires were slipping. So he had to back it up a bit and park it along the side of the road. Jana was going to have to walk the road with us.
After about an hour's worth of hiking on the road we finally get up to the trailhead. After dealing with a few last minute issues, we all headed up the trail and Gray's Peak 3.5 miles distant. Jana, being a recent resident of Colorado from Arkansas, wasn't used to the altitude. Bob and I tried to cheer her up and joke around and such to take her mind off the slog up the trail. I scared her a few times yelling "What an AWESOME view!".
After about a mile hike up the trail, we got up to a fairly large stream crossing around 12,000', and Jana decided she had had enough and decided to turn around, and wait for us back at the trailhead. Bob and I continued on. A bit up the trail, we ran into Marshall Ulrich and Theresa Daus-Weber making their way down from the summit. We talked a bit and continued on our separate ways. We came to a fairly large and deep snow crossing, with lots of foot holes from previous hikers postholing through the deep, crusty snow. Bob got across with no issues, but I was a bit concerned of falling through, being 200+ lbs of weight on the snow. Amazingly, I didn't post hole through it.
Intermittent patches of snow now dotted the trail along the way up. At around 12,700', we came to a fairly long and narrow snow patch. I looked at the snow and determined that it was fairly hard, crusty, and slick. Going up wasn't an issue, but I was very concerned about the way down. I decided, since I didn't bring any trax with me that I would go no further. I offered to wait there for Bob if he wanted to go on and summit. The thought of beer consumption was stronger than the desire to summit, so we both decided to turn around and head back down. Bummer.
This time upon reaching the snow field, I did manage to post hole on the far side up to my knees. As the trail got smoother, we were able to run more. Bob, being Bob, took off down the trail in his usual fast manner. I tried to keep up, and ended up turning my ankles a bit and decided to just go easy and not screw them up big time.
I got back to the trailhead and saw Bob and Jana waiting there. After a bit of taking care of some personal issues, we headed on down the road back towards the car. We all started jogging a bit, and feeling like I didn't get to accomplish what I wanted today, started running down the road at a fairly decent pace (at least for me). Not long afterward, I caught up with Marshall and Theresa and decided to walk the road down with them (and Toasty the dog). When we got to the car we bid each other well, and soon after Bob and Jana came in.
This was to Bob and I's last chance of some decent altitude training before our pacing duties at Hardrock in a few weeks. Bob and I are doing different legs there for Scott Olmer, who will be running his fifth Hardrock. We did get some altitude training in, it just wasn't what we really wanted. It'll have to do.
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