The Hike to the West Peak "Almost" Summit

We waited for the coolest weather day for our longest hike--up to the peak of the tallest mountain in the area.  The West Peak is the one on the right in the Twin Peak picture below.  In order to get both mountains in a single picture, we had to be many miles away, so it's hard to get a good grasp of their size.

But at 13,626 feet high and 2.75 miles wide, West Peak is a majestic mountain.  In the lower left hand side of this picture there is one of the natural rock wall dikes that radiate out from the mountain.  It looks a little like a piece of the Great Wall of China, marching across the foothills.  There are over 200 of those dikes in this area, some of them as long as 14 miles.

To get to the trailhead, we drove to the top of Cuchara Pass and headed up and east on a gravel road called Cordova Pass.  This is a rough six miles, with some interesting "wildlife" on the road.

We started the hike around 8:30, and found ourselves in an open meadow.  It was 55 degrees when we started, so we were encouraged to hike fast to keep warm.  That's not a bad problem to have on a hike in July.

We hiked up to a high ridge, but there were still plenty of miles between us and the summit.  The nice thing about this hike is that the trailhead is over 11,000 feet in elevation.  So it was relatively flat during the first two miles.

We hiked over and around some of those 200 rock walls coming off the mountain.

We were usually hiking towards the summit, but the views to the Spanish Peaks in the other direction weren't bad either.

As we got higher, it looked like the trail was leading right off into the clouds because we were higher than everything around us.

Around 2.5 miles into the hike we got to a giant rock cairn, and the official end of the trail.

Now the only thing between us and the summit was a couple miles of loose and steep rock slides.

So we headed right and across the face of the mountain, using our best hiking skills to step 12 inches up and then slide 10 inches back down.  It's a good thing it was a 60 degree day, because this is the kind of hiking that makes you sweat.

And it was a long ways to the top!

It was at this point that we saw two people coming down from the summit--far to our left.  We had totally missed where we were supposed to be climbing up, and had wasted lots of energy going the wrong way.  We got back on track, now with worn out legs and lungs that were hurting from the high altitude.  We really hate to not finish a hike, but Denisa finally decided she better save some energy for the perilous hike back down from this steep loose rock.  We had never split on a trail, but Denisa stayed put while Mark continued to the summit alone.  To keep herself occupied during the wait for his return, Denisa played with her camera.  She took pictures of the mountain side and the occasional flower.

She took pictures of the tiny flowering plants that were smaller than her index finger.

She started down slowly, taking pictures of the more colorful lower slopes and the beautiful sky.

All this time Mark is toiling upwards, using those strong muscles to get to the summit.  He took a few panorama pictures of his view from the top ridge.  The clouds are really coming in now, and he is worried that he should get back down before the afternoon storms hit.

He hiked another 15 minutes up, and took this final picture just short of the summit. He's looking down on all the lower peaks in the area.

Denisa caught one picture of him on the ridge coming down.  He's that gray speck on the top of that big gray mountain of rock.  Next time Mark needs to remember to wear a bright red shirt so he'll be easier to spot at the top.  Unlike Denisa's leisurely stroll down, Mark was making record time on his descent.

Reunited at the tree line, now it was a fast 2.5 hike through the forest to get to the trailhead.  As we passed through the open meadow, the sky looked angry and we saw lightning on the mountains in front of us.

 But once again we made it back to the car before it rained.  A little sad that we had missed the summit, we will just have to come back to the Twin Peaks another time to conquer West Peak together.