July 13, 2010 I climbed Torreys Peak and Grays Peak. I had already climbed Grays in 2004 with Mike Vermeulen, but he wasn't in the mood to traverse to Torreys. So that would be new for me. Grays was perhaps my favorite 14er in Colorado I'd done before--very easy, with awesome scenery. The trailhead is 1:15 from Boulder so I got up at 3am, left at 3:45, and arrived at 5am. The dirt road leading to the trailhead is in much better shape now than it was in 2004. This time there was only one car at the trailhead when I arrived. I started at 5:05, a little before twilight (5:11) so I could just barely make out the trail at first. Here at 5:35 it was finally light enough to take a picture. Greys (14,270 feet) is on the left, looking lower than Torreys, which at 14,267 is actually the lower peak. Interestingly despite the 3 foot difference in height they are ranked 9th and 11th in Colorado--Mt Antero at 14,269 fits in between!
One great thing about this trail is that the sun rises behind you. Here it hits Torreys. The trail is nearly flat for a long time, and good quality, so you can go fast. I soon passed the guy who probably parked before me, but then soon after that was passed by a trail runner. I was relieved to see that he couldn't maintain a running pace even on the flatter sections, but he still soon got way ahead of me.
You can see the South Paw Couloir (a snow climb) to the left and the Dead Dog Couloir, mostly melted out, just to the right of the summit. These would be fun to try sometime.
Looking up toward the nondistinct summit of Grays. The trail runner is quite a bit ahead.
Torreys and the ridge to the left leading to it from Grays. You typically climb Grays first, then traverse the ridge to Torreys, and then reverse part of the ridge and take a trail down from the saddle.
True to form, however, I took a wrong turn at one junction, and ended up going on the trail to the saddle rather than the one leading directly to Grays summit. I think I have made a navigation error on pretty much every hike I have done this summer. Anyway I figured no harm--I'll just do Torreys first instead. But one problem--you have to cross a snow field, seen in the distance.
After my last hike, in which I slid some 50 feet down a snow field, crashed into rocks, and injured myself, I was quite reluctant to cross this. Again I had no poles or ice ax or crampons, and just trail running shoes this time. Fortunately there was a good path, with a lip of sorts on the right, although the lip faded in places that were somewhat dicey. The snow was still very hard, but a little bit crunchy, which meant there was a tiny bit of friction. I thought "here we go again" but proceeded cautiously and made it. A fall would have been very serious. Fortunately I didn't need to recross this and there was no more snow to deal with the rest of the hike.
On the saddle, looking toward Grays. I would head this way after tagging Torreys.
Toward Torreys. There was a solid class 1 trail along the entire ridge.
Continuing along the ridge. A lot easier than the 3rd class ridge I did from S Arapaho to N Arapaho!
Closer up. I ran into the trail runner coming down this near the summit--he had visited both summits in less time than it took me to get to the first one.
On the summit of Torreys. Terrific views. I was hoping to get up Grays in under 2 hours and it took 1:58 to get up Torreys, which although about the same distance is technically harder, so I was happy.
I only stayed on the summit for 3-4 minutes, as it was quite cold and windy (sustained 20mph+ I'd guess). I wore my new Arc'Teryx Epsilon AR jacket, which worked beautifully, and a wool cap.
More scenery. I tried taking a few pictures of myself on the summit, but again they came out poorly so I've omitted them.
The ridge leading to Grays Peak.
The trail runner was worried about the snow, and you can see him being very careful going down. It was probably better that I did this section the other way--it's easier to go up than down. He got through fine of course.
40 minutes later, I was on the summit of Grays. Here's the ridge I just traversed.
Looking down into Stevens Gulch.
This should be Lake Dillon and Frisco. If you look at my Frisco pictures you can see Grays and Torreys from there.
A woman had made it to the summit a little before me, and she was waiting for her friend so we chatted a little. She grew up in Fort Collins but was going to college in Minnesota (where I was born) and was bagging 14ers this summer. She'd already done several in the Sangre de Cristo range a little earlier. I asked her to take my picture with Torreys in the background and it came out pretty well. As you can see my new jacket is a little big for me, but it's the smallest size they make, and otherwise it's terrific. I have on my favorite North Face hiking pants, which I tore a gash in sliding down the snowfield my last hike, but they don't make them anymore and no one makes pants like these this year, so I patched the gash and they work just fine.
The ridge again.
I now headed down the correct trail for a change.
Scenery on the way down, now that the sun was a little higher. It was still only 8:13am at this point.
Tons of people would be coming up the trail when I went down. I was glad to have started early.
Torreys again.
Here's the junction I got confused at. The useless sign just says "please stay on the trail". This guy didn't know which way to go either so I'm glad I could help out. Honestly I don't think I even noticed the trail to the left when I was going up--there's a clear trail to the right and even another sign you can see in the distance. Also this junction is at only 13,300 feet and I expected the junction to be in the 13,600 to 13,800 foot range based on maps and guidebooks. So I don't feel too badly that I missed this.
I was supposed to follow this trail here.
This was a strange trail that doesn't appear on the map and I didn't notice it intersect the main trail. It looks like there's a solar toilet or something like that here. This is the saddle between Torreys Peak and Kelso Mountain. Well, there's private property mixed in with these mountains so maybe someone owns this.
Further down the trail, looking back at Grays and Torreys.
Scenery left of Grays.
Heading down. Again a great trail that I could jog down much of.
Looking back again.
The parking lot becomes visible.
The final bridge leading to the trailhead, and a sidewalk-like trail at the start. I recall running down this in 2004, which was long before I started actually running.
The bridge. I got down in 1:16. Total time was 4:05, distance was 8.3 miles, with over 3700 feet of climbing.
The trailhead.
Scenery I would have seen at 5:05am if there had been any light....
Here's the route. A fantastic hike--still one of my favorites, and even better including Torreys. I got home around 10:30am and still have most of the day left! Incidentally I ate nothing during the hike and just drank a couple sips of water (I brought 1 liter) near the end of the hike.
