Scott's
Mountaineering
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Photography
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This is my trip report of the Northeast Ridge Route on Mount Elbert, September 10, 2005.
After a night in Denver and a training hike on the Herman's Gulch trail. We stayed in Leadville at the Super 8 Motel. Sleeping at 10,000 feet (or at least lying awake in bed waiting for morning) is a good way to prevent problems at higher altitudes.
We hit the trail from the North Mount Elbert Trail Head at 7:10 AM. It was cold, but not freezing. After 20 minutes, we stopped to take off a layer as we warmed up. We continued up and took a 10 minute break for every hour of hiking. We summited about 11:30, I'm not the fastest hiker and I like to take pictures, some hikers were slower, some faster. There are two false summits from the trail. The last ridge before the true summit was very windy. Of course we chose this spot to put our jackets on for the last few minutes to the top.
It was a great day on the mountain, a party atmosphere on the summit with 10-15 revolving hikers and a few dogs coming and going. I did not mind seeing more people around, I was just glad to be there. We stayed for 30-40 minutes and headed down.