For our anniversary we decided it was time to do our first 14'er, and after deliberation that probably amounted to "the Elbert summit looks pretty and isn't technical" we booked flights to Denver, a place in downtown Breckenridge, and queued up the trip. Upon arriving in "Breck" we were pretty thrilled by the close proximity to all things food (especially the crepes), alcohol, and the outdoors.
We got sucked into the tourist trap of taking the ski lift up and thinking we'd be able to go all the way to the top and get some easy hiking in immediately, but that backfired so we promptly returned back down to the town.
For our first day of hiking we ended up at McCullough Gulch and the Blue lakes, not wanting to over exert ourselves at altitude before even getting on a 14'er. This provided a great opportunity to get the camera dialed in and hang out with some mountain goats. Followed up by some quality time at the Breckenridge Tap House then Rita's for tacos and margs, we were sufficiently acclimated.
The next morning we were up around 4:30 am and out the door before 5. We've been caught in afternoon thunderstorms before in Colorado and certainly did not want that situation to come about again. We parked at the trailhead just around 6 am and starting cruising up. We made pretty solid time moving, reaching the summit just after 9am. It was certainly a humbling last mile or so up, as our pace dropped off pretty significantly in that last hour. We were back down to the car just after noon, finding it surprising people were just starting on their way up. The weather seemed clear, but not a chance we were taking.
After Elbert we had contemplated doing Quandary Peak with it being closer to Breck and less intense, but after dealing with a little altitude induced sickness on the way down, Sara was not so inclined. We ended up hiking thru Hoosier Pass instead, and spending some quality time with the bartender at Canteen mixing up some super splendid cocktails. On our way out of town we met up with Ben in Boulder, hiked up Green Mountain above the flatirons and were completely refreshed for Monday morning after our red eye flight home...