Pettingell Peak

We couldn't have had better weather for our WTS reunion hike. Adam organized the trip to Pettingell Peak, an 13,500+ foot mountain not too far from Denver. There was a good amount of snow once we got into the higher elevations, but the temperature stayed high and the wind was fairly calm. We hiked up the Herman Gulch trail to Herman Lake, then headed off trail towards the summit. The last stretch of the hike, and returning on the way down, was treacherous. So much loose rock and scree mixed in with the snow made every step uncertain. You never knew where you might posthole up to your knee. It took us almost 4.5 hours to get up and then about another 3 to complete the 8.5 mile round trip.


Click pic to see whole album.

St. Vrain and Meadow Mountains

I got to do a weekday hike with Nick from our WTS class. He agreed to go with me to do one of my projects--St. Vrain and Meadow Mountains. We drove up to Allenspark and parked on the Rock Creek 4-wheel drive road. The regular trailhead is closed due to an aggressive animal that is protecting her young.

We started up the road and eventually had to move off trail to get to the saddle connecting St. Vrain and Meadow. The flowers alongside the creek were gorgeous and we enjoyed the picturesque vistas. The bushwhacking got a bit treacherous towards the treeline but we did our best to follow game paths.

We found the St. Vrain Mountain trail and followed it to the south side of the peak. Once again we left the trail and then summited St. Vrain. There was a rock shelter at the top, but we didn't need it because it was such a beautiful day.

The skies were not threatening at all, so we headed east to Meadow Mountain. We followed the trail back to the saddle and scoped out the best route up Meadow. It was just a couple hundred feet to summit.

Because it was difficult following the right 4-wheel drive roads we decided to follow the traditional trail back to about half a mile from the trailhead and then we cut over across the ridge back to the car. Overall, we did about 10 miles and 3800' elevation gain. It was an awesome (and dry!) day.

Our route.
Click for pics!

Graduation Day!

We finally finished WTS (Wilderness Trekking School). After five lectures and five long all day field trips, we are finally equipped to explore the wilderness... or something like that. Actually, we can now officially go on level C hikes through the CMC and sign up for Basic Mountaineering School next spring, if we so choose.

So, you might ask, what was entailed in graduation day. Well, we had to get up at 5am, meet our classmates at 5:30 and drive to Stoney Pass near Bailey to start hiking by 8:30. Without following a single trail, we were able to follow a 13-leg route that we mapped out using topographic maps and features, compasses, and some newly-mastered skills. Aside from the thunder, lightening, and brief rain in the afternoon, it was a fun, 8-hour hike. Over the course of this class, we've bonded with some neat people and managed to survive our over-zealous instructor. After dinner and drinks it was really nice to get home just before it was totally dark.



Check out the whole album -- nice bear-claw marks on the trees in the first two pictures!

WTS Survival Day

Today was our 4th WTS field trip -- Survival Day. The highlight was shelter construction. We paired up and had 30 minutes to construct an emergency shelter out of whatever material was in our packs or could be gathered from the surrounding area. That's not much time but we were all able to get some pretty decent shelters started. To get a sense of what we were making, read this (pdf).


This has sorta become our team motto so we made up T-shirts.

WTS Snow Day

We spent 11 hours on St. Mary's Glacier, needless to say this was a long, long day. We met in Idaho Springs at 7:15 and then traveled on to the trailhead. At 10,000 it was cold and VERY windy. We bundled up and headed up the glacier practicing self-arrests without ice axes and cutting in steps up the snow. Due to the 40mph winds and the slushy snow conditions our instructor decided we should go to another spot for the rest of the day's activities.

After lunch and descending to a wooded area, we headed up towards a steep section of the mountain. Here we practiced self arresting with ice axes many, many times. Then after learning about rope handling techniques we practiced roped travel and passing pro on snow.

After glissading we mapped our bearing directly to the parking lot and postholed cross-country to the cars.

Wet weekend

Saturday we took a hike to find Saddle Rock. It was wet.


Sunday we had our 3rd WTS field trip -- Snow Day at St. Mary's Glacier. We practiced kick-stepping with mountaineering axes. We did a lot of self-arrest practice with the axes (feet-first, head-first, head-first belly-up, and head-first belly-up with-packs). We also did some rope-team practice. At the end of the day we glissaded down our practice slope and hiked out cross-country through the woods back to the parking lot.

Sunday was pretty wet and cold too.

April Weekend

It seems that I passed my cold on to Dan this weekend. Unfortunately, he seems to have gotten it a lot worse than I had it. So, he stayed in Saturday to try to get better. Even though it was foggy and lightly raining I decided to go to Sugarloaf Mountain (halfway between here and Nederland) to summit. But, it was so incredibly foggy up there I couldn't even tell if I was at the trailhead. So, instead I went to Betasso, hiked the loop, checked out Bummer's Rock, and previewed the link trail from Boulder Canyon to see if we could bike it.

Sunday was our second WTS field trip. We met up with our team over in Evergreen at Genesee Park. We spent the day traveling off-trail to locate points we plotted at home. We used our compasses, maps, and pace counts to find trees with tape on them. Both Dan and I located the points our teams were supposed to find! Afterward we had dinner at BeauJo's with Ann and Sean (from our team). Next week is snow travel day! Yay!

WTS Field Trip #1

Today was our first field trip with our Wilderness Trekking School (WTS) class. Today's topic was dry land travel, but up at NCAR there was quite a bit of snow.

We practiced using a compass and reading topographic maps. We hiked over to Bear Canyon and practiced stream crossings. We headed up towards Bear Peak a bit and learned to cross snow-covered talus and then continued off-trail for a while. We circled around the NCAR Mesa and then scrambled back to the parking lot.

Once there we reviewed important pack contents and the ten essentials. After some knot tying we went to the Dark Horse for food and beer.

When Dan and I got home we hit our bikes (I got a new mountain bike yesterday!) and went up to the Cottonwood Trail. A fun day!