Although my goal to climb all of Colorado’s 14 thousand foot peaks, Elbert, among others, will not be one of them yet! At least for now, I’m still alive and that’s all that matters, I can always go back and hike this one again.
August 20, 2005 my group of friends and I set out to hike this one! We camped in Twin Lakes campground that night and had shrimp. Um um good. The weather forecast had been iffy because of thunderstorms that week and I knew that we needed to get up and down the mtn before noon. But that morning of the 21st we woke up late about 5 a.m. Our goal was to hike Mt. Elbert via the Black Cloud Trail and pass South Elbert on the way.
After breakfast we got going and started up the trail around 6:30 a.m. The trail was great although steep and tiring. We reached the 11,000 mark a lot faster than I thought to my pleasant surprise. Then after a break we headed up and trucked on up the side of the southeast ridge. Upon reaching the top of the ridge from the Black Cloud Trail we were nearing 14,000 ft.
Also nearing in sight was Mt. Elbert and South Elbert. Photo But in the sky were some clouds hanging over the area as if to dare us to keep going. I was feeling doubtful and didn’t really care if I made it up as long as I made it back down. The group kept on going to the South Elbert summit and I followed along since the weather was seemingly unchanging and the big clouds around weren’t combining like I assumed they would.
Once at the top of S. Elbert I was seriously doubting of continuing because of the chance of getting caught in an electrical storm. Everyone else but me headed for the top while I waited in the 13,900 ft saddle by S. Elbert. Even though I felt it may be to dangerous (Well.. risky anyway) to go they continued. I waited and the weather seemed fine, at least it hadn’t gotten worse. I even began to wish I was up there with them and not missing out on the summit.
From the saddle I was at it was probably 1.5 hours to the summit and back. After 1 hour had passed I noticed a cloud directly west of there with some precip, which I felt might head toward us. This is when I began getting nervous because even though the clouds were at lest 10 to 15 miles away they could easily out run us on the ridge.
Then the worst thing I could have heard happened. Rolling thunder from that cloud now I was calling it a ‘storm’. I immediately began hiking as fast as I could back up to S. Elbert so I could go back down the southeast ridge. With my group almost 500 feet behind me, on their way back from Mt Elbert’s summit, I hurried back the way we had came. The storm was getting closer. As S. Elbert neared I stayed to the north of the summit versus being on top just to have a barrier between me and the storm. La Plata Peak was the mountain of choice for the storm which was south of where we were, luckily. Although it was there, the bolts of lightning could easily reach the mountain side we were on. Once we were all on our way down from S. Elbert I met up with a friend of mine in the group and his hair was standing up on ends. This is the sign you really don’t want to see ever, when you’re hiking on top of a 14er or anywhere for that matter.
Lightning and thunder was getting closer and louder, and the storm was too close for comfort; especially since we were on rock above tree line. I think I said “please protect us from the lightning” about a million times to the Lord Almighty by the time we reached tree line and the storm had passed.
The moral I learned is that always follow your gut feeling about the weather. I felt that it was too risky to continue and I didn’t but I ended up waiting on my group in the spot where they slip. Instead I should have at least started back down. Everyone made it back safely but it wasn’t worth getting struck.
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Sawatch Range
