Gray's Peak

08/27/2005

My wife left me with the boys on Friday night. I decided if she was able to have a girls' night out, then I could go ahead and leave her a couple hours on Saturday to climb another 14er.

I left the house at about 3:30AM the next day.  I probably would have gotten an earlier start except my wife kept nagging me about being careful and other non-essential stuff.  I am sort of surprised she even got up.

I was also sort of surprised how many cars were already there when I got to the trail-head around 5AM. 

		I immediately passed one group of people on the trail, and saw some people going up another route to Torrey's on my way up, but for the most part, I was alone on my hike up.  The early morning sky was just beautiful.  I took several pictures before the sun came up.  Most of them didn't turn out at all.  This is one great thing about a digital camera... you can take as many pictures as you want and delete as many as you want. This a pre-dawn shot of Torrey's peak which is right next to Gray's.
This is a shot back to the East as the sun is coming up.  It was prettier in person.
		All of a sudden I came across these two mountain goats blocking my path.  I took about 10 pictures of these.  They would look at me every once and awhile, but for the most part didn't care much about me. The only problem was that I needed to get past them and I was not too sure about just brushing past them.  I ended up climbing up to the left and over them.  Still, they just kept on eating their rocks.
Here is a picture of my two companions with some perspective.  You can see the "saddle" between Gray's and Torrey's in the background.
		The mountains looked different every few minutes.  This is a nice shot of the sun shining on Torrey's.
This is the view to the West of Gray's peak.  The mountains seem to go on forever.  Again, it was so much prettier in person.
		This is the first person to sign the log book on the top of Gray's peak this day.  I got there a little after 8AM.
I climbed down to the saddle between the two 14ers, but decided to head back home for a picnic with my family.  I'll do Torrey's again some other day.
		Still from the saddle, back towards where I came up.  You can't tell from this picture, but there were already tons of people on there way up.
This is about the half way mark (in distance, but not height and not time).  It was too dark to get a photo here on the way up, so I took one back on the way down.