My daughter has enjoyed hiking with us this summer, and she has expressed interest in hiking a 14er sometime. At the beginning of the summer, she said she wanted to try Longs Peak, but I convinced her that a hike to Chasm Lake, which is shorter and much less technical but still a good haul for a young kid, would be a better warm up option. She did well enough on that hike that I thought Mt. Sherman would be a realistic possibility for her first 14er. We set today, September 7, as the date we would make that attempt.
I opted to drive us down the morning of the hike rather than stay the night the night before. At 3:30, I woke Becca, who was remarkably chipper considering the time. By 4:00 we were on the road to Fairplay, and we were on the trail just after 7:00 AM from the Fourmile Creek trail head.
There are a lot of old mining operations in this area, and the beginning of the trail followed a 4 wheel drive road past one of them, the Dauntless Mine.
A little further up, another building loomed that is the Hilltop Mine. Our route would take us below it, then swing back above it before proceeding up to the saddle between Mt. Sherman on the right and Mt. Sheridan on the left.
The saddle began at about 13,150 feet, and from here on it got much rockier and a bit steeper.
There were, however, some great views to the west of Leadville and all of the 14ers that are in that vicinity, particularly Mt. Elbert and Mt. Massive.
From the saddle, the long ridge up to the summit of Mt. Sherman lay ahead.
This part was pretty straight forward and well marked, but it was incredibly windy in spots that were exposed to the west side of the ridge. Becca had gotten off to somewhat of a slow start, stopping frequently to rest, until we got up on the saddle, and she then got a bit of a second wind. We spent much of the hike leapfrogging to the next cairn...I would go ahead and she would rest until I got to a cairn, then she would hike up to me, then I'd go ahead again, and she'd again hike up to me. That worked pretty well until we got toward the top of the ridge, when she seemed to get really tired and we had to stop much more frequently. This area toward the top was the most narrow and rockiest area so far.
In the picture above, the high point is actually a false summit, and the true summit is a little ways past it but it is essentially a flat run there with very little additional elevation gain.
With a little encouragement, Becca finally made it across this stretch and reached her first 14er summit about three hours after we started.
There were several families up there today, and we were fortunate enough to find one that allowed us to borrow their summit signs for some pics:
As this was my 16th 14er summit, I had to get the obligatory picture with the current count:
There were 15-20 people on the summit while we were there, with many of those being first timers, and many children which was awesome to see. At 10:30, after maybe 15 minutes on the summit and with some storms beginning to form to the west, we decided to head back down. Becca was still pretty wiped out, and we continued to leapfrog down most of the way because she still needed to stop and rest frequently. Five hours after we started 5.25 mile, 2100' elevation gain round trip, we were back at the car, and not one minute after closing the doors, it began to rain. And not one minute after that, Becca's head hit her pillow and she was out cold.
I'm very proud of my daughter, and I'm not sure if this hike meant more to her or to me, but it really doesn't matter. I always learn something about myself when I do a challenging hike like this, and I know this had to have been one of the most difficult physical endeavors she's ever attempted. She was a trooper today, but there were a couple times when I thought we may not be making it to the summit on this trip. In the end, though, she persevered and made it to the top and back down to tell about it. She is not too keen on trying another 14er anytime soon, but I remember after I had done my first that I was convinced I wouldn't be looking to climb anymore either, and I could not have been more wrong. I have a hunch that her thoughts will change after she's had some time to recover.
Here is the RunKeeper data of our trip.
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