Sometimes weather and schedules just don’t mix. With Lindsay’s mom in town, my brother, mom and I had hoped to do Holy Cross via Halo Ridge since the Wife had no intention of doing that route anyway. I watched animated radar for three days as the overall forecast deteriorated into “mostly cloudy with a 40% chance of thunderstorms after 11:00am”. Blast, there’s no way that route can be finished that early without starting at midnight. Plans were shifted and I eyed a few different mountains finally settling on Torreys from the southwest Chihuahua Gulch. Again, other people’s mileage numbers did not even come close to what I would end up tracking.
If you leave Loveland 30 minutes late and need a pit stop, the end result is almost a perfect hour behind schedule. Especially at speeds better left unmentioned. I was hoping for a 5:00am start time and we ended up on trail at 6:05am. Finding our way to the Chihuahua Gulch 4WD road was simple. Peru Creek was easy to navigate and it was obvious that the van would not go any further than that. Shortly thereafter, we were geared up and hiking the road to the trailhead…
Someone was watching us from afar…
The road portion is simple with three main water crossings. The first one kind of throws you off. Turns out there’s a trail off to the right that takes you a dozen yard up and across a plank bridge…
The second crossing. It gets easier from here as the water depth decreases…
Looking back to the south, sunrise was well underway…
The gulch was lit up nicely. Here’s one of my newly acquired panorama skill files…
Somewhere around 2.5 miles up the road, the official Chihuahua Gulch Trail begins. Talk about a warm up…
The next portion takes you right, off the trail and nearly straight up to the Grizzly-Torreys saddle...
Finally over the saddle and enjoying views in another direction…
Grizzly looked SO far away…
We didn’t rest long as the enormous southwest face of the mountain loomed overhead…
As we started up, we could look back at Grizzly and see two more hikers on the move…
This part was pure work. The rock was unstable, the dirt was loose and the path was more or less a goat trail going straight up…
It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but it was the kind of terrain where you take one step as far forward as possible only to have the loose dirt net you precious inches of forward progress…
Holy Cross already had clouds hovering overhead…
Chihuahua Lake from approximately 13,000’ on the way up…
The unrelenting push up the hill. Most reports speak little of this route and what you do find does nothing to prepare you for the 1,800’ climb from the saddle with Grizzly…
The views north were beginning to open up as we gained more elevation over the mountains in the distance…
It seemed like forever until the line of sight was reached. Then Grays came into view with its full summer trail capacity…
Soon after, Torreys summit was right there but still over there…
Ha, ha! Summit!
Ridik and I had nearly 15 minutes over my brother and 20 over my mom. We tried to chill as best as we could with the hordes and gangs making their way around the standard routes…
At the very bottom of our view, the final destination looked ever so far away…
I was freezing. Most of my slog up involved not stopping and just moving forward. This left my hands to stiffen in the wind and my legs started tingling in a non Chris Matthews way. Then I saw this guy strolling up the normal way…
Mom and brother finally arriving. We were kicked, hectic…
Gore Range…
Buffalo Mountain sitting comfortably over Silverthorne…
The Mosquitoes being typical Mosquito Range mountains…
Momma bird feeding style for Ridik…
We didn’t want to stay long but we ended up being on the summit for almost half an hour. Once warmed and replenished, we headed right back down instead of trying for Grays Peak too…
Heh, I’m always amazed that people are always starting up when we’re well on our way down. Maybe they know something about weather that I don’t, but there’s no way I would be on the ascent at noon…
The trail was very difficult to keep track of. It more or less follows a drainage that’s mostly loose sand with the occasional ankle buster sized rock…
Immediately after finishing the rock portion, we took a much needed break and the wind finally let up…
Then we were ready for the almost six mile hike back to the van…
Heh, that wasn’t so hard…
At the trailhead. Still two plus miles of hiking left. My knees were toast and I cursed that damn road the whole way down. I hate hiking roads to get to trails…
Ah, we need a Jeep thing…
The temps were rising despite the clouds moving in…
Hey! A marmot shot to complete the journey!…
Then I turned around and saw this (five pic panorama), only reinforcing the choice to head out instead of continue…
Ridik and I made quick work running the last mile back. That gave us a bit of a break before settling in for the drive back…
Driving back over Loveland Pass it was apparent that the weather was no longer cooperating for the day…
There was some bike thing going on and those people looked miserable…
The drive was typical I-70 crap with people terrified of every turn and braking uphill while hogging the left lane in someone else’s blind spot. Ugh, I hate how people drive. GET OUT OF THE WAY!!! I’VE SEEN THIS CRAP HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF TIMES BEFORE!!! IT’S NOT THAT SCENIC PEOPLE!!! LET ME GET THE FRIGGIN’ TICKET! I’LL TAKE THE CHANCE, JUST
MMMMMMMOOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE OOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!![/rant]
Lovely hike was that.
Torreys Peak, Round Trip:15.78 miles
6hrs 11min
4,636 feet vertical gain
6:05am start time
2hrs 18min one way drive time
*Bummer, the panoramas don't look as impressive when this forum resizes them*
I love my car!
And you "hate" huskies?! 
