sunday 7/25

Left the house at 3:30 Sunday morning headed for Twin Lakes. Got there about a half hour before I was supposed to meet up with the rest of the group who was camping up there. Met them all at the SE ridge trailhead at about 6:30 and we started up a few minutes before 7. Steep switchbacks dominated until we crossed the creek for the first time and got into the meadow. We hiked the meadow until treeline and things got really steep after that. Finally gained the ridge after essentially hiking straight up the drainage. I think everybody in our group mentioned it would have been nice to have a few switchbacks mixed in that section.

Once on the ridge, it was a pretty quick hike over to South Elbert at ~14,100. We didn't stop here long since the view from there to the ridge around to the real summit is pretty daunting. We took off down the saddle and started the climb up the final pitch. The first section was pretty steep but nothing like the drainage from earlier. The final climb was broken into 3 sections with a quick steep ascent, then a more mellow flat area, almost like stairs up to the summit. We finally reached the summit in around 4:25 and ate and waited for the last of our crew who from the outset said he wasn't going to keep our pace.

After hanging out for close to an hour we got a little worried that our last man hadn't made it up yet and were getting ready to head down the trail looking for him when we spotted him climbing the last couple switchbacks for the East trail. Somehow he had managed to get over there trying to avoid the climb out of the saddle between South and Elbert. He finally summitted and grabbed a few bites to eat before we headed back down.

The route down to the saddle and back up to South Elbert was more elevation gain than I remembered coming down earlier (isn't it always that way at 14k feet?), but we made quick work of it and reach the ridgeline where it was time to drop down the drainage toward treeline. It wasn't fun coming up and it might have been worse coming down with all the scree and dust in the steep trail. Once back down to the meadow it was pretty smooth sailing back to the trailhead. The temps got more and more oppressive as we lost altitude and I dipped my hat in the creek both times we crossed it for some air conditioning. Made it back down to the trailhead and the full trip was completed in 7:54. Most of that time was over 13k feet with all of the ridgeline traversing on that route. Good times!