Steps in the Right Direction: Gray's and Torrey's

Sun rise

We are going to go up both of those, Ready?

Walking with the Freedom Hikers

Blue skies

These Freedom Hikers like our pace and stayed with us.

Can you see the people up on the switchbacks?

A graph of the steepness of the trail

Kathi likes her 4 by 4 LO get 'em through the rough spots Truck!

The long trail

Alarm went off this morning at 3:45am. We want to get an early start today and beat the Freedom Hiker's three vans up the road to Grays and Torrey's Peak. Those vans will not be fun to try and pass if we met them on the road to Grays/ Torrey's!

On our way to the trailhead we have to drive through the Eisenhower tunnel which goes through the Loveland pass, and as an added bonus of well used land, there is a ski hill on the mountain above the tunnel. The tunnel itself is about 1.6 miles long. One end of the tunnel you are at 11,013 feet above sea level and the far end is at 11,158 feet. The tunnel traverses the Continental Divide. The first tunnel was started in March 1968 and was completed in March 1973. The second tunnel began August 1975 and completed by December 1979. I guess they had a better idea what they wanted to do by the second tunnel.

After 18 miles on I-70 we got off right onto 4 WD road we needed to take. Directions are to take exit 218 and proceed for 3 miles on 4 WD gravel road. The road is sometimes two cars wide, sometimes three, mostly just one car wide. Very rocky, lots of pot holes, and boulders sticking out of the road. The fact that the road is at times wider than one car provides more options as to how one car might try to avoid the most amount of disruption. There is little or no concern about staying on "your side" of the road as any person driving on this road is trying their best to navigate through the least of the hazards. We drop the truck into 4 by 4 HI, that is until we see in the early dawn light, major truck eating gully ruts three feet deep all stacked up in a row just waiting to swallow us up. We stop and drop into 4 by 4 LO. After some major moments of wonderment, we make it through these monsters. After those monster ruts the rest of the road seemed rather tame, but I can tell you tame it was not. This is a road you do not drive your personal vehicle up...rent one! It took us an hour to go from the condo to trailhead. We did get there just before the vans, as they drove up behind us. One of the vans got hung up in the monstrous ruts, had to back down the road and take a run for it. The ladies inside were hanging on for dear life. Not sure I would want to take a running start at those ruts!

Everyone managed to arrive at the trailhead with a monster rut story. At the trailhead we found many trucks and SUV's with people who had arrived late the day before and camped out. The trails were going to be full again today. The Freedom Hikers are all happy to see the familiar Wisconsin girls and are sharing their successes of the last few days . Kathi and I notice their numbers have dropped off significantly. The hikers today are the last ones standing. Well almost, one lady made it about three quarters of a mile up the trail and then lost control of her bowel. She just turned right on step and headed back to the trailhead. She thought she might give it a go at hiking today, but was on the receiving end of the give it a go...

We hit the trail by 6 am and fall in line with the Freedom Hikers, chatting away about their different climbs they have taken this week. After about the first mile Kathi and I realize we should leave this group and move on at our pace as the lady hikers are rather fatigued and are moving kinda irregular in their pace. I don't want irregular, I want regular pacing, listen to your hear rate as a pace to your hiking. Even though their numbers have dwindled these ladies do not know the first thing about a steady hiking pace. Kathi and I make a break away.

As we move up through the valley we can see two hikers off on the side ridge hiking up a much more difficult accent to Torrey's. Yikes it looks daunting! Just about this time we are passed by a gentleman who must be in his late 70's. That's right he was 70+ and passed Kathi and I and I don't think he was breathing all that hard. These moments are humbling. This gentleman stopped long enough with us to comment on the two hikers taking the difficult route and then dusted us up the trail. It is nice to be humbled by this ageless hiker.

The trail switchbacks, back and forth up Grays. You can see all sorts of people ahead of us up on the various switchbacks. We make it to the top of Grays in 3 hours and 10 mins. Standing at 14,270' we shoot a few photos, but we are socked in the clouds and about all that is visible is the summit. The summit was very cold. We put on a few jackets and headed down the side of Grays . It took a half an hour to hike down to the saddle and a half hour to hike up the side of Torrey's.

By the time we reached Torrey's Peak (14,267) it was free of cloud cover so we we're able to shoot a few pictures of the views, along with the standard picture of what mountain we are standing on and the elevation. In all, this is our seventh fourteener of the week, and tenth over all...yeah! This was a great accomplishment! We sit down for lunch, but find it is getting breezy and chilly up there so we pack up and head down. Just as we are exiting the summit of the mountain we see the summit register, and try to sign our name. The packet was filled with names, really filled like every space of white was filled. Wow this trail is a busy place. The register is only for July of this year!

We head on down to the saddle and then must walk over a lingering snow field to exit the saddle. The snow seems to have a good track on it so we did not take out the snow stabilizers we had packed along. I punched some good heel tracks into the snow for the lady Freedom Hikers behind us.

We did run into two fellas sitting along the trail on the way out. One had on a bright orange jacket, so Kathi asked them if they were the climbers who did the side ridge trail. They were in fact the guys. They said it was a difficult trail and told us about some of the sketchiness of it. The last little bit to the summit they had to sit on the ridge as if riding a horse and skitch themselves the last fifteen feet. Either that or walk a two inch ridge line for fifteen feet. Let's just say it is not my kind of hike...ever!

After such a wonderful hike it was good to be finished. It took us 7 hours and 50 mins for the whole thing. A small group of Freedom Hikers finished shortly before us and were waiting for their three vans to arrive to pick up the group. Kathi and I were not going to head down that road until those vans arrived. We can't imagine what it would be like to meet those vans in the section with the thee foot deep ruts. So while we waited for the vans, we sat around and chatted with the five hikers we spent the most time with today. The vans finally drive in, so Kathi and I say a goodbye to our friends and hit the road. I do mean that because when we got down to the major gully ruts the path we drove bottomed out the truck, twice. I did not see any muffler laying there so we just kept moving on down the hill.

8.8 miles
7 hours 50 mins
Total 142.35