Mt. Shavano

Well, we decided to put our flatlander lungs to a test today. We figured that since we wake up every day looking at Mt. Shavano, we should climb it. We didn't get the classic 'Alpine Start', but we knew we had nothing but blue bird all day long. Leaving the trail head at 8:15, hopefully not a flatlander mistake as there were already two parties ahead of us. The first 1/2 mile or so is on the Colorado Trail, meandering through subsidized ranchland, thank you U.S. Forest Circus. When we hit the spur heading up Mt. Shavano the trail became very rough, like hiking on softballs and footballs. After about 1/2 mile of that, the trail became much better, maintaining a steady ascent. The trail is about 3.5 miles to the top, gaining 4,349ft. from the Blank Gulch trailhead at 9,880ft. As far as Colorado Peaks go, that is a fair ammount of verticle gain, many of the peaks have 4 wheel drive roads that go well over 10,000ft.

After about 1.75 hours we emerged at the end of the treeline. This offered up some panoramic views of the valley below as well as the "Angel Snowfield". The snowfield, which is now just a small ribbon of snow, takes the shape of an angel in the spring as the snow begins to melt. As we continued up the trail we saw the two groups that had started before us ascending the snowfield. We were definately traveling faster, passing one group and catching up to the other. As we passed the snowfield on our way towards the saddle near the summit, the wind began to howl. We were expecting wind, but this was 30-40mph gusting to 55+. I was worried that Mica might blow away, luckily she was attached to Soli who provided good upward momentum. We reached the Summit in three hours and 20 minutes, that made us flatlanders pretty happy. We had the other group of hikers snap our picture at the top.

A bit of coffee and tea and we were ready to descend out of the wind. On our way down we hopped, skipped and jumped down the loose scree, reaching the Saddle in 20 minutes, at least twice as fast as it took us to get up.

Hati and Soli are great trail dogs, they generally stay pretty close to us and seem to appreciate getting to the summit as much as we do. The only trouble is that Hati blends into the geology quite well, can you spot her in this next picture?

Once we reached the treeline we stopped for a longer lunch, out of the wind. The dogs were mellow for at least 5 minutes. Their metabolism is such that they can recover way quicker than us humans are able to.

After lunch Hati and Soli were ready to go. But before we were done, we had to take a picture of Stanley. Stanley is our sweet new thermos that keeps tea incredibly hot, even in below zero windchills. Stanley came to us from our friend Eric, who gets all kinds of Stanley products as part of his sponsorship in his quest to make it to the North and South Poles and Mount Everest in one year! Good luck Eric, check out his website www.savethepoles.com We made our way down the trail we came up, stopping periodically to give our knees a rest. When we got back to the trailhead the temperature was close to 50 degrees and there was hardly any wind, it felt like summer.