The boys and I did a quick trip to CO to climb Mt Sherman. It’s one of the easiest and busiest of all the 14ers. It hasn’t been high on my list of desirable 14ers to visit, but the boys were extremely reluctant to embark on any adventure away from home and they’re old enough now to exercise some autonomy in their choices, so this was the compromise.
We drove up on a Friday afternoon, arrived around 9 PM to set up camp in the dark, woke up at 3:00 AM, hiked the mountain, returned to camp by 11 AM, napped for a few hours, then drove back home. Our fastest turnaround time yet. I would rather have spent another night instead of driving 5 hours the same afternoon, but the boys are excited about being at home these days.
Regarding the hike itself. There were already about a dozen vehicles when we arrived at the trailhead around 4 AM. It was a dark night, no moon to help see the trail. I elected to take an “alternate” trail that was shown on the Gaia GPS app, because I was already feeling a bit crowded by the number of hikers in front of and behind us. This turned our hike into a bit more of an adventure, because we were certainly the only ones on our little side trail detour. There was good reason to avoid it–we came upon a short snowfield crossing the trail, just steep enough that it would be hard to stop a slide without an ice axe, and no idea what the runout looked like. I walked the boys across one by one, very gingerly, they used my hiking poles while I wielded a bit of metal angle iron that I retrieved from some ancient mining garbage. The boys were excited by that bit of adventure, for sure. After crossing the snowfield, it was initially unclear whether any trail existed for us to continue on, and none of us wanted to retrace our steps back across. Anyway, the trail proved to be easy and clear, and in the end our shortcut made the entire experience more worthwhile (all’s well that ends well?).
By the time we reached the top, the entire trail up and down the mountain was covered with hikers. On the way down I don’t think we ever had more than a hundred feet between us and another party. Easily the busiest 14er I’ve ever done. I didn’t expect it to be remote–if I wanted remote I wouldn’t be doing 14ers at all. But even though I was prepared for the crowds I was still surprised by how much it detracted from my experience. I don’t think it affected the boys as much, and I avoided comments that might diminish our shared experience.
Once again I was extremely proud of my boys. For getting up early, for hiking the entire mountain without complaint, for being good to each other. I’m lucky to have such a great family.
