Colorado 14ers

Every mountain and every experience climbing a mountain is different. Colorado has 54 official fourteen thousand foot peaks and everyone is different and unique. I fell in love with mountaineering when my father took me up my first 14er at the age of nine, but I did not fully appreciate them until we started our quest to climb all of the fourteen thousand foot peaks in Colorado. This was a challenging adventure that I started with my father in the summer of 2000 and completed in the summer of 2009. This was not an easy goal to accomplish, but every mountain was a great experience and I am glad I was able to experience it with my father. Colorado is such a beautiful state and climbing all of the 14ers gave me an opportunity to fully explore it. Gerry Roach says in his book, Colorado's Fourteeners, "A lifetime of adventures is waiting for you in Colorado's mountains." I agree with this statement because even though I have climbed all the 14ers in Colorado, there is still so much more to explore and I never get tired of climbing Colorado's mountains.

Of the 54 offficial 14ers in Colorado there are some that stick out because of their exquisite beauty or distinctiveness. All of them are unique and challenging, but these are a few of my favorites:

1. With Snowmass Peak rising high above Snowmass Lake, the lake's crystal clear water and the large white rock face jetting out of the water makes Snowmass Lake my favorite spot in Colorado and Snowmass Peak one of my favorite 14ers. Snowmass Lake is an exquisite high mountain lake outside of Aspen and is what makes Snowmass Peak so stunning. It is a nine mile hike into the lake, but it's worth the hike.

2. Handies is one of the most beautiful 14ers in Colorado because of its array of colorful wildflowers. Vivid wildflowers stretch across the American Basin at the bass of the mountain and stretch all the way to the top. The flowers are in full bloom in late July and early August and it is one of the prettiest displays of natural mountain beauty.

3. The Crestones are very distinct mountains that sit side by side. These are very prominent mountains that point straight up to the sky. Although Crestone Needle was one of the more challenging 14ers, it was my favorite mountain to climb. The rock on the mountain was very stable which made it easy to scramble up the rock faces.

4. Windom was the first mountain that I climbed and is still part of my top 10 favorites. Windom is located in the Chicago Basin, which is between Silverton and Durango. The only way to get to the Chicago Basin is by train, which is part of the reason why this is such an incredible area of Colorado. The Chicago Basin is a lush, green area that is full of life. While camping in the Basin we had a family of snowshoe hares come out to play, several mountain goats wondered into our camp, and deer grazed in the field across from us. The Basin as well as the three 14ers above it make Windom a beautiful Colorado mountain.

5. The top of Oxford is what makes this mountain so unique. The top is rounded like a large hill with a big orange rock on top.

6. Redcloud is a good name for this mountain because the top is full of red rocks. The red, orange, and yellow colors on the top of Redcloud are very vibrant and unique.

7. Longs is a popular 14er to climb because of its proximity to Denver, but it is a remarkable mountain. Longs is located in Rocky Mountain National Park, which is a beautiful place by its self. The view of it from Longs is breathtaking. The morning that we climbed Longs it was raining, but that didn't stop us and I am glad because once we reached timberline we had climbed above the rain and were looking out over a sea of clouds with blue sky above us. Along with the amazing view of Rocky Mountain National Park, the keyhole also makes Longs special. The keyhole is near the top and is like an entry way inviting you to the mountain.

8. Capital is not only beautiful from top to bottom, but is also one of the more challenging peaks. The most challenging part is the knife edge. This is a saddle that you have to get across - the majority of the saddle comes to a sharp point. There are some people that walk across it, but we straddled it and shimmied our way across. Not only did it hurt, but there were drop offs on both sides.

9. I liked Castle because we climbed it early in the season when there was still a lot of snow. The majority of people climbing Castle during that time of the year were skiing or snowboarding down, which was interesting to watch. I also enjoyed looking out from the top and seeing the surrounding mountains covered in snow.

10. The entire Elk Range is beautiful and a lot of my favorite places and mountains are located in this mountain range. Pyramid is one of them, but it is often over shadowed by the famous Maroon Bells. My favorite part of Pyramid was the amphitheatre. Right before you climb straight up 1,000 ft to the ridge there sits a valley full of rocks with a sunken spot in the middle forming something similar to a natural amphitheatre.

11. Wilson Peak is a mountain that I will never forget. I have been hurt on one mountain and that was Wilson Peak, but that is not the only thing that I remember about this mountain. The most stunning feature came after reaching a false summit. We got to the top of this false summit thinking this is the top, but were surprised to be looking across to a wall of rock leading to the summit and wondering how we were going to climb it. It turned out that it was easier then it looked.

I love Colorado and I know that there is a lifetime of adventures waiting for me in the state. I am now fully addicted to mountaineering, so after accomplishing my goal to climb all 54 fourteen thousand foot peaks I needed a new, more challenging goal and have decided that climbing the 7 summits (the highest mountains on the seven continents) would be a great new adventure. I have already climbed one, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, and plan to climb Aconcagua in South America this winter. I have been to the highest points in Colorado and it was exquisite! Now I wish to explore the world and the highest points on all the continents.