Climbing Gray’s Peak

Last Saturday, Mark and I sucessfully climbed Gray’s Peak. At 14,270ft (or so) it is usually listed as the 9th tallest peak in Colorado. I thought about writing up a nice trip report for this one, but I have a problem. You see, nothing really exciting happend. Mark and I have been soooo lucky this summer to have trips blissfully free of drama. This is fun and happy for us, but boring for you, the readers!

So, here is the basic synopsis of the trip. We left Fort Collins at around 5:30pm on Friday night, and arrived at the trailhead around 8:00pm. As the trail and trailhead are on National Forest land, we simply found a flat(ish) spot, set the tent up, and headed to bed. Unfortunately, we were trying to sleep on a hillside at 11,300ft, and neither Mark nor I were very sucessful. Oh well. The next morning, we woke at 5:30am, and walked across the parking lot to the trail by 5:45 or so. We hiked the 3.5 miles to the summit (about 3,000ft elevation gain) slowly and carefully. We summited around 9:45. Pictures all around!! The option to continue on to Torrey’s summit was very tempting, but we all felt tired and the idea of “more up” just wasn’t appealing. We started down at around 10:30 am. Made it back to the parking lot by 12:30pm or so. I did not get sick or feel faint on the way down as I have on previous trips, though I did develop a pounding headache about a half mile out from the parking lot. Two advil, a cream soda, a hard-boiled egg, and half a bag of chex-mix later, and Mark and I were packed up, in the car and headed back down to home.

A beautiful hike, an incredible summit, a perfect weather kind of day, and I got some nice shots. You’ll see quite a few of them here, I think!