| Peak: | Quandary Peak - 14,265 feet |
Time to sleep/rest: 1.5 hours maybe
Time to Summit: 2 Hours
Time on Summit: 1 Hour 10 Min
Time to "Un-Approach"- 2 Hours (I stopped for a lot of pictures
Distance: Almost 7 miles
Elevation Gain: 3200-3400'ish
Knowing that there was family in town this weekend and we had two weddings to attend, I needed to climb something close by and quick. I choose to do a night hike on Quandary and Summit in time for the Sunrise on Saturday Morning. We went to the Sky Sox game with fireworks on Friday night as a "pre-event" for Saturday's wedding and then I dropped my wife and Sister-in-Law back at my wife's parent's house in the Rockrimmon area. After that, I picked up the dog and we were out a bit after 11 PM. As always, the adventure began early as I slammed the brakes right around the corner for a bear to cross the road. What a way to start an adventure!
About an hour and a half later, I arrived to the TH at around 1:15 AM having a bad case of the Squirts!
At about 1:35, I decided to get some rest until about 3:45 AM thinking 2 hours would suffice for me to be able to achieve the summit in time for the sun rise. An hour later, at about 2:30 a couple of groups arrived at the TH and set off for their sunrise on the summit and by 2:45 a few groups had already passed. They had me worried that I didn't plan enough time so I got up and was on the trail by 3:00 AM. The sliver of a moon was just starting to rise and it was me, and the dog (Baz). I put a headlamp around his neck so he can see and so I can find him should he run off in the dark. He never does though! Because it was so dark out, I naturally don‘t have any pictures until the summit. I ended up passing all of the other hikers just above treeline. 2 of them consisted of a SAR team searching for two missing hikers and they were blowing a whistle every few minutes. Somewhere above 13,000‘, the squirts came back (oh no!) After taking care of my problem, I continued on for the summit. I arrived there almost exactly 2 hours after taking off at 5 AM. Wow, almost an hour til sunrise!
I signed the summit register for Baz and Myself and then did a self portrait of the twilight. Baz was happy to be at the top- This was #9 for him and #21 for me (with now 11 total for this year).
As the sky began to brighten, I did my summit tradition of a shot of whiskey and then proceeded to brew some coffee. I had Quandary‘s summit to myself with these spectacular views.
Here is a good shot of the summit register-
And a look out towards the collegiates-
Baz enjoying the views after chasing a fox at the summit!
At this point, the two SAR guys caught up and headed down the west ridge.
At about 5:40 a couple of other hikers made it in time for the start of the actual sunrise and a few stragglers made it just in time as well.
The sun is just about to peak over the mountains
This doesn‘t really look like me, but what are you supposed to look like after hiking a mountian in the dark after only an hour of crappy sleep!
The sun is a little higher now.
Here are a couple of hikers just making it up.
A look towards Decalibron (I think)
Here is a cool looking traverse. I would like to know what that is called-
After the sun was up a bit, a couple of Rocky mountain goats visited us on the summit. It was a mom and baby
At about 6:10 I began to hike back down. After dropping after a ways, I snapped this picture of all of the SAR team vehicles below the upper lake.
Here is a look back towards the summit-
Here is where the fun began- I saw about 15 more mountain goats on the way down. This one posed for me-
A look back towards the lakes-
A couple of shots of the trail below treeline-
After a while, I got hot so I took off my shirt and zipped off the bottoms of my convertible pants. There were so many folks hiking up at this time. I think I passed over 200 people who were on the way up between treeline and the car. This is by far the most people that I had seen on a mountain. I was glad that I at least went up with a little privacy in the great outdoors. I come out hiking to get away from this right?
Here are the signs at the TH which I arrived back at the car at 8:10. It took me the same amount of time to go down as it did up because I stopped for so many photos. This could have been at least 30 minutes faster- The cars were lining the road all of the way back to the paved road at this point-
I decided to drive over to the lower lake for a couple of pics and snapped this one-
I also got a good picture of most of the route above treeline- Just follow the ridge-
Thanks for reading my report!
See you at the top!
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