Mt Yale, Colorado 14ers

If you are going to be a bear....be a grizzly!  After hiking four 14ers in one day, why not finish off the weekend with a monster at Mt Yale!  

Mt Yale is almost 10 miles round trip.  We didn't get quit as early a start this day.  The drive was much further away and lets face it, we were tired!  It was actually almost sunrise when we started, so not ideal for this long of a hike.  The weather almost caught up with us but we got a little lucky.

This was my 5th 14er and I'll probably admit, one of the most difficult.  The real challenge was probably the last 1.5 miles.  That's where almost all the elevation gain was and it was all bouldering over some challenging rock faces.  We lost the trail a bunch of times so you end up making your own.

If you expand this picture below, you'll see two people in red that are hard to see.  No - that's not us.  But it was eventually.  You can see how hard it is to find your way across this part on the way to the summit.

And then going around boulders like this was very tricky.  I say that...and then sure enough there was a dog and 5 year old kids that came up behind me so go figure.  Guess I'm getting older - ha!

My favorite summit so far.  Perhaps because it was one of the most difficult.  I might even argue that this one 14er was harder than the four peaks we did on the previous day.  Sarah says I have to do it again since she wasn't there with us...