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After a leisurely hike up Mt. Elbert the previous Saturday, I was planning on
more of a workout, hoping to get Huron Peak and Missouri Mountain from the
Rockdale trailhead with 3,000' ascents on each. The total mileage would end
up at 10.7 miles and 6,300' elevation gain. It seemed easy enough from the
planning phase standpoint. Arriving at Rockdale, I could see the infamous
creek that must be forded. This is a raging river in comparison to other
crossings I've done in a vehicle. Backing up to acquire a good speed, the
water crested over my truck's hood as I sprinted across. This was a real
adrenaline rush. The rest of the road wasn't too bad, and I set out at 7:30
am on the trail. The trail led to Clohesy Lake rather than up the slope as
Roach's book describes. I began a diagonal traverse through the trees to the
proper topography. This was really steep but manageable. Eventually I popped
up into the basin above treeline (photo on the right). |
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At this point, the rest of the route looked reasonable, however there was
no trail whatsoever. This didn't bother me as I had been enjoying the solitude
of less traveled routes lately. This basin was interesting with the jagged
peaks on the southern horizon, but Huron didn't reveal itself. After moving
upward over talus and scree for about an hour, I finally gained the saddle
between Huron and the point to the North. I had followed the topo just about
perfectly, and was feeling quite good physically, despite the bushwhacking
extravaganza. I spotted the train of people making their way up the trail
from Winfield on the west side of the saddle. The peak looked incredibly
close (photo on left) and I was reassured about my prospects to bag Missouri
later. |
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After a short traverse across a talus field, I came upon the first section of trail
I had seen since Clohesy Lake. The rest of the route was obvious, following
the ridge and some switchbacks up the ridge. On the right is a view of the
remainder of the route up Huron's ridge. This went by pretty quickly, being a
400' vertical slog up talus interspersed with trail. I was making pretty good
time, having reached the final 100' in less than two hours. Reaching the
summit, unexcelled views of Missouri, Emerald Peak, Ice Mountain, and North
Apostle emerged. Like many of the summits I have visited this year, there
was no summit register. There were some pieces of one scatted on the summit
(maybe someone is trying to rid the state of these). |
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I was making pretty good time on the descent, but as I have come to
discover recently, descending routes with no trail on scree tends to
take its
toll on the body. I made it to tree line and tried to extrapolate where
the trail is supposed to be had I not came up from Clohesy Lake.
Not finding any thing, I took the lowest inclines down available.
This worked well for a while, until I came upon unavoidable cliff bands.
I down-climbed the class 4-like bands carefully down the the creek crossing
and had no choice but to wet my socks or hike down to Clohesy Lake again.
Being a hot day and running low on water, I opted out of the Missouri climb
for the day and crossed the creek. Somewhat disappointed, I returned home,
with a resolve to study routes a little better when planning on a 6,000'+
vertical day. |