Hiked Missouri mountain..

Date climbed.: Jun 25th, 2011
Summit: Missouri Mountain (14,067 Ft)

Start Time: 7:40AM
Finish Time: 7:20PM

 Me, silpa and rohit's family drove to campgrounds near the trailhead on friday night, long drive took 4 hours + from Cheyenne, WY. We stopped at Ft Collins where Anu and his wife joined with set of snow shoes (The whole hike was possible only because of having snow shoes). Around 7ish, we set up our tents and couple beers and BBQ made that night delightful...

Group photo at the trail head... we arrived after tearing tents down and morning breakfast at around 7:15AM and took some photos at the trailhead and started hike at 7:40AM.

Until the treeline, everything was very nice and sunny... it's after the tree line it all started as soon as we took the trail towards missouri (to your right) - Left is belford and oxford. The snow was all over the mountain even at 11,000 feet.  This is where we have used our snow shoes... GOOD USE

At around 11,400Ft after the gulch we met a skiier who took our group photo, he was coming down from the top of the mountain skiing.

Rohit's pace was well beyond our's pace of hiking, so he became the photographer while enjoying the views.. BTW, it was me on the knees taking a break.

Rocky the dog is the leader of the group showing the way, as the snow was so slushy, he knew where to direct us.

After the snow strech is done, here comes the worst part of the hike, class 3 exposure and on top of it, loose rock and chips which were not at all helping to get a grip. We somehow managed to get to the top of this scary hill. All the way at the bottom is me trying to catch up...

 A close up picture of how bad it was... Basically the trail was covered in snow and we had to take this short cut to climb up this hill inorder to avoid any deep snow...

 After that hill from around 13,700ft, it was all pretty flat down and little up to the summit, the background mountains were awesome to view with real eyes... i would never get to see such a scenery in my life again i guess.. (Because this is one of the crazy, which i told myself not to do again if the snow conditions are like this).

P.S: In between this straight walk to the summit, there is one 50 mts strech where it's really steep on the right side... while going up wasn't a problem.. coming down it was scary.

 The rest of the group waiting for me at the summit, little creative photography from Anu or Rohit.   Finally our group click on top of the summit.

Climbing up was done, now even thinking about going down was freaking all of us.. It made me more scared as an experienced hiker told he has not thought about how to get down yet... :(.  The best part of the hike is slidingdown the mountain where there was snow... We save almost an hour of pain in hiking down and covered atleast a mile hike by sliding down this snow mountian..

 It was me in the background waiting for the rest of group to come down, i took the initiative to slide down first (well got frustrated) while our group was hesitant to slide....

Due to the sun, the snow melted and it got into our shoes, we stopped try Anu';s creative idea of wearining plastic socks instead of regular socks... Totally did not work :)... But atleast we tried..



Be safe & careful out there, i am not very happy while i was hiking, but after i finished it.... it was good. I am deeply saddened when i found out that 2 hikers lost their life hiking this mountain on the very before day and it took them a week to findout their dead bodies.. I took the time to post this blog for those who are planning to hike this mountain in this conditions...

This post is dedicated to them and hope their souls rest in peace. [News Link About the Hikers]