Democrat-Cameron-Lincoln

Another "catch-up" post from our Colorado trip... we did a second double-14er day, and it was a good one. It was kind of a triple-14er, but not really, or I guess it depends how you count it. It could have been a quadruple, but the top of Bross was closed. I'm not sure how you "close" the top of a mountain, but we didn't go up there to see if there were fences or armed guards.

We drove up as far as we could, parking just below the first big snow field across the road. It almost looks like foamy surf:

The view up the valley where we were headed:

We weren't surprised to see snow over the trail:

It was good practice for kicking steps in snow on the side of a hill:

Saddle up! (No, I just mean there's a saddle... up)

Finding a good way up Democrat was tricky. The actual trail headed into steep snow fields and lots of talus. We saw Sombrero Guy glissading down - and then I think we saw him again on a bike heading up toward La Plata a couple days later?

It was a scramble involving boulder hopping, but we made it to the top, yay!

Hmm, what pose should I try next?

I used this one for my Hardrock Twitter account photo :)

Why, yes, I will try a tasty piece of dark chocolate yumminess, thank you.

We headed down the ridge instead of trying to pick our way down the way we had come up. This worked out MUCH better and I was glad John had suggested it.

Heading up to the next mountaintop:

We had to walk around the top of Mount Cameron to figure out where exactly the highest point was located. It was weird - first it looked higher over there and then from "over there" it looked higher back where we just were. Anyway, we got to the top... somewhere:

It was just a slight drop down to the next saddle before starting up the trail to Mount Lincoln. Because it's so shallow between them, and Mount Lincoln is higher, apparently Mount Cameron doesn't really count. But that won't stop me from putting it on my 14ers webpage.

Karate Kid:

My version from a less impressive location:

Starting down the trail, admiring the views:

Incredibly, we ran into a couple from Norway who has raced with a Norwegian friend of ours. I guess we each look like adventure racers to each other, so we had to stop and talk. How funny to meet them on the top of a mountain!

The road over toward Bross had many colorful flowers:

If you can see the faint colors on the hillside - those are all flowers. Pretty!

We crossed below Bross on a connector trail to finish a big loop and head back down to the truck.

Phew, another long day! I started each day slowly, waiting to see if my body was ready to climb in the altitude again, and it kept agreeing to go uphill, so that's what we did!