2022-10-16 Chief Mountain

My goal today was just to get out and train. I had just come back from our Banff trip and I was itching to continue hiking after such a long hiatus earlier this year. I chose Chief Mountain because I hadn’t really been up this way before and I wanted to scope things out for a possible winter visit. The plan was to hike the standard trail up, but not back down. Instead I wanted to continue West-ish on the ridge line back down to the overgrowing fire road and on to the original trailhead. However, I needed to scope things out from the top because the summit appeared rocky on the satellite view.

The rough line I had originally planned to follow from the summit.

But the weather had other ideas. It was still dark as Hazel and I started out from the truck but I could already tell that we’d quickly entered a cloud. It was wet, and the higher we climbed, the worse visibility got. We reached the peak and were just socked in. I tried scoping out the rest of our route but could barely see past the bottom of the knob at the summit.

Hazel waiting patiently while I scrambled up one of the summit rock piles for a better look.

A crappy pic of Hazel after climbing the opposite rock pile showing how thick the clouds were.

Nervous about overcommitting to unseen rocky terrain with Hazel in tow, I was hesitant to continue my original plan. Instead I hugged the summit knobs down and around to see if I could get closer eyes on my planned route. But this was a mistake, I quickly found myself in a large boulder field that Hazel wasn’t willing to continue on. Defeated, we trudged straight downhill until we rejoined the trail around tree line.

As we met the old road’s junction with the standard Chief Mountain Trail, I felt unsatisfied. I had missed my opportunity to explore and see some views of the Mt Evans Wilderness. Plus it felt like the workout I had looking for was only half done. So I turned left instead of heading back to the truck.

The new plan was to find the slope I’d originally planned to descend from the bottom, gain the ridge, and go back to the summit. The sun finally started shining as we gained the ridge. I welcomed the chance to get warm, it was colder than I had wanted for longer than I had expected. Just a few minutes later I was rewarded with my first view of anything that wasn’t grey fog or the trees right next to me.

My first view of the day, still pretty cloudy.

Looking towards the summit, I really liked the tree’s frosted tips here.

We picked our way through the trees on the climber’s left side of the ridge until we got to the summit clearing. The sun was out and we could see our objective just ahead.

Hazel surveying the last part of our second climb.

It was an easy walk across the meadow to the summit. Where I kicked myself. In the clouds that morning, I had missed an easy, much less rocky, path to the meadow and my original route. My instinct that morning told me this was an obvious route but the clouds were so thick that I couldn’t confirm it.

One objective of mine had been to scope out this mountain for winter access. So I had intentionally planned a route that took me on the North and West sides to see how bad the rocks shown on satellite were. The fact that these rocks had to be big in order to show on satellite didn’t even occur to me 🤦‍♂️ so this probably wasn’t really necessary in the first place. With visibility so low that morning, I felt uncomfortable going off route and stubbornly tried exploring these rocks anyway. This all would have been fine if Hazel wasn’t also with me. Now I know to avoid this kind of terrain with Hazel in the future. I also learned to mark backup routes on my map to help keep me from getting stuck in the mindset of having just one option.

On this side of the summit knob, I saw that there was a little chute that Hazel was capable of following me up. We zipped up it and surprised everyone on top who hadn’t expected someone to come from our direction. Hazel got some water and pets from other hikers while I took pictures.

Looking North at the Front Range.

Some early season snow stuck to North facing slopes.

We went back the way unbeaten path down the ridge. This time walking a bit further to find a slope with slightly less trees and stumps. We strolled down the old road back to the truck, satisfied with our morning of exploring.

Views of the clouds retreating South from/near the summit.