As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we camped in San Isabel National Forest this weekend. The forest contains 19 of the state's 54 fourteeners, peaks over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) high, including Mount Elbert, the highest point in Colorado. San Isabel is 1 of 11 national forests in the state of Colorado and contains the Sawatch Range, the Collegiate Peaks, and Sangre de Cristo Range. Collegiate Peaks contains 5 of the area's 14,000-foot (4,300 m) peaks are named for famous universities and colleges, including Mt Harvard, Mt Oxford, Mt Yale, Mt Princeton and Mt Columbia. We decided we wanted to hike to the top of Mt Yale, which the 21st tallest peak in Colorado and the 5th highest in the Collegiate Peaks since it was about 30 minutes away from our campsite. Mt Yale is considered a Class 2 difficulty and is 14,196' tall. You begin the hike at the trailhead at Denny Creek at 9,900' and gain 4,300' in elevation, in a 10 mile round-trip hike. It was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day, average temp was about 65F. We began the hike at 7:15am. It took 4 of us 3.5 hours to hike to the top of the peak and 3 hours down. The only bad thing about the hike was that it was VERY windy above the treeline, about 75 mile an hour winds. We only got a few pictures at the peak since I was hanging on to a rock for dear life! Below is a picture from the internet, our pictures would have looked about the same (yes there was still some snow).
What did you do today?
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