| Smoky day on Humboldt Trip Report |
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| Smoky day on Humboldt   | 
| Page Type: Trip Report Location: Colorado, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 37.97610°N / 105.5547°W Date Climbed/Hiked: Jun 13, 2002 | Page By: Kiefer Thomas Created/Edited: Jan 24, 2006 / Oct 11, 2006 Object ID: 170798 Hits: 585 Loading... Page Score: 0% - 0 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
The RED arrow points to where you should normally be able to see Humboldt Mountain. |
This mountain under normal circumstances isn't that hard, just a strong pair of legs and you'll do fine. At the time I had a car (Ford Probe) so I had to park at the lower TH, little did I know what a God-awful slomp that it would be to the upper 4x4 TH. I planned to day trip this thing so I started out before sunrise, I think sometime around 4:00am. The South Colony Lakes Road is a pretty intense Jeep Trail. You could take a stock vehicle up there to the 4x4 TH but I'm not sure if I would want to. The Forest Service brought in some heavy equipment and made repairs & improvements to the lower 3 miles of the road in the Summer of 2007. What those improvements entail, I don't know.
I arrived at the 4x4 trailhead around ~3 hours later. It took me considerably longer to cover the ~7 miles to reach the upper trailhead at Lower South Colony lakes. I was cold, shivering, physically exausted and ravenously hungry. It was difficult to breath and get my barings. I didn't so much collapse as I dropped like a rock to the ground next to someones truck to rest and eat. I hadn't eaten, barely drank and pushed myself to get there in a reasonable amount of time from the lower TH. Under normal circumstances that would have been fine but due to the smoke it was just so terribly hard to breathe. I have a bad habit of pushing myself when I feel I'm behind on time. I felt exhausted & terrible sitting there. It was like sitting in a huge smoker. I swear, I DO NOT KNOW how people can smoke and still run, climb & mountaineer. I usually run short distances (normally) to also increase my time; I couldn't even do that.
After a solid 30 minutes or so, I reluctantly pulled myself up and started up the trail. I passed a few people past the actual gate (still on the Jeep Trail) and quite a number more on the actual trail. It took me if I remember right, almost 4 hours to reach the top of Humboldt Mountain from the 4x4 parking TH! The tredge up to the saddle was pretty uninspiring and nothing but a slog. I passed a small party (3-4 people) and another person soloing. Slowly walking up the ridge to Humboldts summit, turning around every so often, I could see people turn back on a regular basis. It was like watching a broken line of ants not knowing what they wanted to do, go up or go down, kinda funny actually. Everyone choose to turn around and head back down. I was the only one who did make it to the summit that day. Fact I got off trail near the top (meandering and not paying attention) and ended up going up about 70 ft. on the north face. This was definately harder but nothing even remotely serious. If anything, it proved to be more interesting and slightly more challenging (as if the smoke wasn't enough!)
This is all smoke, no clouds. |
The hike out was straight-forward, easy and quick. I just wanted the hell out of there. I didn't speak to anyone on the way out as most people were either in their tents or just plain gone. I didn't see any goats either which was a little strange because there's a small herd of them which call the basin home. I will say, seeing the rock wall as it starts to the left of Broken Hand Peak and continues as it undulates over to past Crestone Needle was impressive. I read somewhere that it was the longest wall in Colorado that maintains its verticle height.
Without doubt and quite ironically, the hardest day I've ever spent on a Colorado 14er. And Humboldt is as easy as they come! You just simply couldn't breathe! I was taking somewhere around two to three breaths for every normal one. I stopped by that Texaco gas station on US24 at the top of the hill near Dvoraks Rafting and slept for a few hours before I continued home. Definately an interesting day.
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Sangre de Cristo Mountains
