Android Stats:Total Distance: 4.8 mi
Total Time: 5:14:11
Moving Time: 2:03:16
Average Pace: 66.0 min/mi
Average Moving Pace: 25.9 min/mi
Min Pace: 8.1 min/mi
Min Elevation: 10522 ft
Max Elevation: 12460 ft
Elevation Gain: 2520 ft
Recorded: Sat Sept 10 07:04:32 MDT 2011
So I've made a decision regarding Supper-Pup. It's on. This report will mark his fourth summit and he hit nine months old on that day. Last week in the 50 degree rain I clocked his gait at 8:30:000 - 9:00:000 per mile. That's not running, that's max walk before trot. I'm worried about what kind of endurance monster I've been creating. We just have such a hard time finding sitters for our schedule that all of my rugged hike plans have been shelved for a while. The last few weeks found me bringing forward the early season hikes for 2012 (the season I originally planned on getting Limbaugh out there). This might be the first dog of mine that can possibly outdo me in physical strength. That means it's about time I get back on my daily regimen to keep up.
After a night of wine, beer and food at some sort of festival thing I vaguely remember, I awoke to that nasty "buzzer alarm" tone at 2:55am. Somehow in a daze punctuated by micro brewery tasting burps, I was able to get ready by 4:00am which meant we could leave by 4:30. After breakfast burritos and gas we were doing yet another dark drive down I-25 to I-70 around 5:30am. Didn't matter much since the hike we were doing was relatively short.
Once again, Dry Gulch was our destination and an access road off of the Loveland Pass exit was our trailhead. With favorable traffic and minimal pit stop time this drive is under two hours for us.
This was the first time I have taken all of the dogs up here. Before it has been class 3 climbing with just Ridik and then with no dogs at all. Let me say that gearing up the rambunctious sled dogs 15 feet from a 65MPH mountain interstate was a little stressful.
I started track recording on the tab a few minutes before departure. Around 7:15am we were hiking the road up to the creek crossing where one heads southwest up a wide track towards an old airplane crash site...
Once off the road, the gain begins. Somewhere around 800 vertical feet mostly covered in .75 miles. This struck a nice balance to the mid 30's temps we were facing in the shade of the trees. As of September 10th, 2011, fall was in the air something thick.
The dogs were full steam ahead and I finally caved letting them hike sans leash within half a mile...
Nothing much was going on except for soaking in the surroundings of an unexpectedly moist and moss covered area. Seeing shadows highlighted in morning frost reminded one of the current air temps...
Scents galore...
Lots of strange fungus up in there...
Early on treeline is reached and any multitude of possible paths present themselves up the east side of Trelease...
It's moderately steep for a short stint from the last of the shrubs. We tacked north, west then south as we gained elevation to the eastern summit of the mountain. Within a few grueling minutes me and doggies were on top of Point 12,304...
We spent about 20 minutes there checking out the views. I had some pie-in-the-sky hopes of hitting the 13er at the end of the ridge, but Supper's obvious slow down meant that Mount Trelease would be our objective for the day. After splitting up my almond butter and honey sandwich between five dogs, I had a couple of bites and we set course for the couple hundred vertical over to the summit...
Someone is a happy mountain stompin' supper-pup...
I recently read an article on Summitpost that talked about these high alpine snow patches and the redish tinge they sometimes get. It's an algae that blooms in the snow and can sometimes cause diarrhea in people. So I tried to keep the dogs from eating it. But once they caught sight of it there was no hope. Luckily this higher patch was almost entirely white...
From there the summit of Mount Trelease was mere yards away...
This thing was clinging to the icy rock in the shade of the summit cairn...
Grays and Torreys showing signs of recent snowfall over 13,400-ish...
One of the calmer sections of the continental divide in the background...
Hagar, Citadel and Pettingell to the north...
Idiots love grandma's turkey bite treats. They love hiking for the human food they get if nothing else...
It seems like we spent almost 45 minutes up there just relaxing while the dogs had their breakfast/lunch summit meal. Then we started back down on a more northern ridge towards a well eroded game trail we spotted from the east summit. This made for a much easier descent. The plan was to drop down early on the north side and contour southeast to meet the ascent track...
We dropped too far north too soon and had to bushwhack our way back to that trail...
All in all this can be a real nice warm up hike or short day hike that will let you be back in town by 2:00pm with a late start. We stopped a lot and hung out on the two summits for a while as well.
Now to find a snow free 13er for next week...
you should see the other side of Grays/Torreys that i got 
