Uncompahgre Peak

Like last year, I chose to visit Lake City to climb some 14ers while my kids were away at overnight camps. Unlike last year, I made the trip this year with a few friends, namely Nicole, Kim and Laura. None of us had ever hiked Uncompahgre, and it was supposed to be a fairly straightforward hike, so we chose to start our week there.

One of the best parts of this trip was that Nicole had recently bought a jeep, and we planned to use it often to get higher up on the trails and reduce our hiking time.

For Uncompahgre, this meant we could 4wd four miles worth of nasty road and shave 8 miles roundtrip off of our hike. This was Nicole's first real test of her new toy, and it was a good one. It was quite steep, very rocky in some sections, and there were a couple of stream crossings. This was the smaller of the two:

At 5:30 AM, we were on the trail to Uncompahgre.

Laura, Kim and Nicole all looked rather chipper before our hike this morning.

And up ahead, the unmistakable shape of Uncompahgre Peak, the 6th highest peak in Colorado at 14,309 feet.

We followed a good, but sometimes wet, trail up toward Uncompahgre. There were a ton of wildflowers on this trip.

As we got closer to Uncompahgre, we could see the bands of cliffs that made up most of the summit block. The climb up was around the back side, and I was curious to see just how bad that climb would be.

Most of the snow had melted, but there were still a couple of snow field to work through on the way up.

On the back side, we got some really amazing views of some far off peaks, although it was a bit cloudier than we had hoped for.

Now the fun part of the hike would begin. On this side of the summit block, we would be required to climb about 150 feet of some pretty steep class 2 rock.

Laura made quick time of the climb.

And Nicole was happy to almost be at the summit.

After this scramble, the rest of the way to the summit was pretty easy, and we hung out there a good 15-20 minutes. We all took turns holding the rock sign that indicated we were, in fact, on the correct summit.

 Still chipper after almost 4 miles up to the summit.

This was my first 14er hike with Laura, and my first hike with Kim since we did Mt. Elbert together last year, and my sixth 14er hike with Nicole.

For me, Uncompahgre would be my 18th 14er. I grew an additional pair of arms to commemorate the occasion.

The hike back down was uneventful, and as far as hikes go, this one couldn't have gone any smoother. We finished in just under 6 hours, and other than some clouds swirling around at the summit, the weather was perfect, as was the company. A very good day for a hike, and another peak is in the books.