My goal this year was to climb as many of the remaining 14ers (and Centennial 13ers) as possible in 9 days in Colorado: August 19-27. The first and last days were travel days, so they were out, and I allowed for one rest day. The trip ended up going very well, and Jupiter Mountain was the only mountain on my itinerary that I could not get to.
August 20th to 23rd I spent backpacking from Purgatory Trailhead to the 14ers above Chicago Basin. I had a nice campsite at 11,000 feet, and succeeded in climbing Sunlight Peak, Windom Peak, North Eolus and Mount Eolus.
Worried my toes were going to fall off during my rest day in Silverton, I bought some new hiking shoes for the rest of my vacation. The next day, I broke them in on a 16 mile ridge-walk in the San Juans: hiking to the summits of “Sundgog”, Sunshine Peak, Redcloud Peak, Point 13,811 and Point 13,832. This day turned out to be the unexpected highlight of my trip.
At this point my time was almost up, so I camped in American Basin, on the 26th hiked to the summit of Handies Peak to watch the sunrise, then drove to Denver to get one night of rest before my morning flight home.
Trip totals:
10 mountains (7 14ers, 2 centennial 13ers and a lower 13er),
22,975 feet elevation gain,
66.9 miles.
This leaves 4 14ers to climb (Blanca, Ellingwood, Culebra, Snowmass), and I am even more excited about some of the Centennial 13ers I will climb in the future, some of which I got first glimpses of during this trip while in the Weminuche Wilderness: The Trinities, Arrow, Vestal, Jagged Mountain, et cetera. There are always more mountains to climb.
2009 has been a busy year. But between life I managed to explore more of my home state than I’d ever experienced. Some highlights included hikes to 
With the economy in the dumps and my life stuck in the rat race, there is just too much other stuff going on right now to spend any time traveling out west to climb mountains, but I will be back eventually. I hope to improve my website in the interim, considering I still have to catch up with digitizing my 5 years of experiencing the mountains of the West (2004-2008).
