In the midst of a busy few weeks, I had a business trip to Denver scheduled. It was on a Thursday, so I decided to extend it and take the weekend off to play in the mountains. Thursday was a typical travel day. Early flight, but waking up much earlier because of a fear of oversleeping. Long day of travel, meetings, typical heavy dinner with all the meeting participants, and off to bed in a different time zone.
Another colleague stayed over as well, and we decided to try some hiking or snowshoeing while we were out here. I'd been looking forward to the weekend, but a lingering cold and sinus issue left me feeling pretty drained, and unsure of my ability to do anything. We had initially decided on Rocky Mountain National Park, but 85-100 mph winds had been wreaking havoc all week, and the snow wasn't yet plentiful enough for any meaningful snowshoeing.
Instead, we decided on Mt. Sniktau, a 13,234-foot mountain off Loveland Pass that provides spectacular views of both sides of the continental divide mountain ranges. The first, and last time I'd been here was with Mandy a few years ago. At that time, closer to summer, it was still cold and snowy up high, but I remember it being a great acclimation hike with a lot of visual reward for the effort.
We exited off I-70, headed up Hwy 6, picking up some skiers along the way, and made our way to the start at 10,990 feet. As expected, it is colder, snowier and windier in the late fall months than it is in summer. When we started out, the wind was pretty mild, but it picked up about 20 minutes after we started. It was a tailwind, of sorts, and didn't hinder us going up. Once on top of the main ridge, however, we were getting gusts that kept us off balance. About an hour and forty-five minutes after we started, we stood on top.
I made two hugely stupid mistakes on top. I was shifting some gear around, and briefly stuck my sunglasses in my pocket without securing them. A wind gust made me stumble, and my sunglasses went skittering across the snow, and down a steep drop. I briefly debated going after them, but the steepness of the slope made me reconsider. No sunglasses, lots of wind, sun and snow can mean snow blindness, or at least painful retinas if you're not careful. A few minutes later, I took off my over-mittens, and right as I did, a gust ripped one out of my hands. I ran after it and made a final full-body leap to grab it, but it blew away, and down the mountain, over a 700-foot steep slope. This was a little more serious given the wind-chill, but I still had insulated gloves on, so I stuck my left hand in my pocket on the way down to keep it warm.
It was a very windy second half, but we made it down in good time. Afterwards we ate at the Dillon Dam Brewery, and unable to muster any more energy for awhile, we booked a room at a nearby hotel.
Later that evening, we headed to Breckenridge for dinner. We'll try something different tomorrow, and hopefully we'll have continued good sunny weather.
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| Torrey's Peak in the distance |
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| Windswept ridge |
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| Great views from the top |
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| The blowing snow at times created brief whiteouts. |
