This past weekend, we did the De-Ca-Li Loop: Democrat (14,148 ft), Cameron (14,238 ft), and Lincoln (14,286 ft).
We slept in the back of the Subie at Montgomery Reservoir on Friday night under some pretty intense moonlight. The next morning, we left the car at 4 AM and began up the 4WD track toward the North Ridge of Democrat. Once into talus and scree up around 12,000 ft, the sun came up and we had some great early morning light. I did this ridge with friends several years ago, and it was still fun as ever. The CO wind whipped around as we dipped below gendarmes, climbed out of notches, and negotiated choss. The best part about the N. Ridge of Democrat is that it isn't listed on 14ers.com, so (1) there are no humans, (2) there are no cairns, (3) you can see all of the humans coming up the trail across the basin from you. It was fun to pop out of "nowhere" into a crowd. From there, we took the trail to the top of Cameron and Lincoln with all of the other humans. The comraderie on the 14ers is a pretty excellent thing, and we marched onward and upward with our fellow ants.
The wind was WHIPPING up high, so we scooted quickly off the top of Lincoln down to Lincoln Ampitheater, again away from the crowds. About halfway down the east slope, Alex spotted something...it was a canvas sign from the running store Vertical Runner in Breckenridge. What the what?! It looked like it had been up there for a long time, so we rolled it up to take back to town with us. [We did briefly consider keeping it as a wall decoration for our new apartment.] I don't know if I'd call the loose scree on the way down "fun", but it was definitely a great workout for the balance and the ankles. The clouds had built up by the time we were above the Lincoln Icefall (in the summertime, a waterfall), and the sky was spitting here and there. I had anticipated this next 500ish ft down to the car as the trickiest part of the day (when Morgan, Scott, and I did it a few years ago, it was snowy and Scott found a way down across ledges by working far east)...unfortunately, I was right. We tried maybe six different ways and kept getting cliffed out. The route description says this is Class 2 (aka basically walking off-trail), and we kept working our way up and down through thick, brushy trees and willows with no luck. I was starting to panic as thunder rumbled nearby and Alex began craving those beers in the car we could see below us. Finally, we tried staying close to the Icefall, and we managed a way down through the cliffbands. WHEW! I don't think we were exactly on-route, but who cares.
After beer and sandwiches, we bombed back to Breck and returned the sign to a super grateful Ryan Morgan at Vertical Runner (turns out the sign had blown off the top of Mt. Lincoln during a race, over a year ago). Not bad a bad way to spend a Saturday morning. CO: we're excited for you.
[Click on photos to enlarge, hover cursor for captions.]
