Ann, Kitty and I drove out to Alma to finish a 14er circuit that we attempted in June with Dan and Sean. Fortunately, the weather was beautiful and we were not hiking in the clouds. Unlike June, though, when there were maybe 50 people on the mountain yesterday there were hundreds there. Cars lined the road to the parking lot and beelines of hikers climbed Mount Democrat. Lucky for us Democrat wasn't on our agenda because we did it in June. So, we were able to jump in front of the masses and head straight up Cameron.
Once we hit the ridge it got very windy and cool, but there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Cameron, which is not "technically" a fourteener because there is a not a 300' vertical difference between it and Lincoln, was actually a more distinctive summit than I had thought. We stopped there briefly before heading on to Lincoln. Lincoln was very rocky on the top and there was a cool turret-like feature just before the top. Again, it was very windy so we descended quickly. We hiked over to Bross which had a huge, almost flat summit--big enough for a couple of football fields.
The only tricky part of the hike was finding the descent down Bross. We ended up going down the non-standard route down a very steep gully. To get to the gully we had to cross a large scree field. The three of us were fine, but we were concerned about the other hikers near us. Three guys and a woman with three dogs glissaded down the scree. One of the poor dogs was yelping the whole way and was not very happy. The woman actually asked Kitty to push her dog down. Right. Like that's a smart thing to do. Another woman who ended up miles from her 8 hiking partners tagged along with us in case she fell or whatever. Just what we wanted--a babysitting charge. We all got down ok and then had a wonderful time hiking back to the car through fields of wild flowers. A great day overall!
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