My group started the hike around 8:00am, which seemed a tad late for me, I would have rather had my feet on the trail at 7:00 or earlier...
The scenery was amazing, and once above tree line the mountain towers above,
surrounded on all sides by peaks and valleys.
There is still quite a bit of snow up there, both in tree line and the snowfields above, so post holing was inevitable.
After the first snowfield, the "spine" of Quandary lays ahead, and there are piles of scree and talus between snowfields. There were also beautiful rusty orange lichon(or moss..not sure) attached to many of the rocks, and tiny flowers.
TALUS!
"SPINE"
While climbing the "spine", I ran into one of the members of "Team Selfish", Pat and his girlfriend Julie on their way down from the summit!
How often do you see someone you know out on the trails? It was very very exciting! :)
A little ways up the trail the trip leader was heading down and told us that the last three members of our group were 10 mins behind, and that we should wait and head down with them instead of summiting. We were both very disappoint and rather ticked off... especially when we waited an hour for them to descend from the summit. There was only 300 feet left to climb, unbeknownst to us, which made it more disappointing.
I stopped hiking around 13,900 feet, ate lunch and took some photos.
My traditional carrot, an essential in my pack.
Including one for my father...which was supposed to be a first 14er for fathers day, but he loved it anyways!
Angela and I with our "Almost summited" sign.
The hike down went very quickly and soon we were back to the car, and stopped at the Breckenridge Brewery on our way back to Denver.
Altogether it was an interesting day, though I was disappointed by not summiting, I did hike higher than I've ever been before, and know that I can handle the altitude now!
Quandary will not escape my grasp, I will re-attempt hopefully on July 8th, 2011.
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