Birthday Blizzard

Yesterday Drew and I hiked Mt Elbert to celebrate Drew's 28th birthday. Mt Elbert is supposed to be the easiest 14er, but its also the highest at 14,433 ft. We thought it would be cool to hike to the highest point in Colorado for Drew's birthday. After spending the day climbing with Sean and Hunter (when it was my turn to climb Drew remarked that he had "never seen anyone fall up a mountain") we drove to the trailhead just south of Leadville and camped for the night.

The trail for this 14er was marked much better than the last one we did. We hiked up the trail through a nice pine forest until we got to tree line.

Above tree line we had a great view of Mt Massive, another nearby 14er. It had a big storm brewing at its peak. From where we were on the trail we couldn't see the summit of Mt Elbert and we were worried it had the same storm developing.

As we hiked it started to drizzle a little, then as we got higher the rain turned into snow. We kept hiking but the weather quickly turned from bad to worse.

We ended up having to turn back at about 14,200 ft because the weather was so bad. The snow was blowing horizontally into our faces- we couldn't even look up to see where the trail was. The snowing was sticking to the ground and Drew was worried about losing the trail. Hearing thunder was the final straw. And since Drew's mom had told Drew the day before not to die on a mountain on his birthday we figured we should honor that request. We were really disappointed that we didn't reach the summit, but it was pretty fun to be in a snow storm in August.

When we got back down close to tree line there was an awesome rainbow. It's not very often that you get to look down on a rainbow.

We made it back down the mountain safely, grumbling the whole time about not getting to summit. A few of the people we saw on the mountain were hanging out in the parking lot when we got back. We stood around talking with them while Bogey passed out on the ground. They guys offered us a beer and told us about some other great places to climb and hike. All in all it was great adventure to celebrate Drew's birthday.

Drew's fun fact: There's more real lemon juice in Lemon Pledge Furniture Polish than in Country Time Lemonade.