#50 New York Mountains and Gold Dust Traverse 10-11-12  After a long set of days on the road and in the office writing and catching up on things, it was time to get back to what's important, and that always means a big day in the mountains. I ventured up into the New York Sub-range of the Northern Sawatch, just south of Edwards CO. The peaks and ridge I traversed were accessed via the East Lake Creek Trailhead and Dead Dog Trail. Isolation was the name of the game yesterday as I didn't see a soul all day long. For October, the weather was calm and the sun was warm with only a light cool breeze. I climbed New York Mountain, a shade below 13,000' and then traversed south over several sub summits en route to North Gold Dust Peak.  N Gold Dust Peak gets a little gnarly with some cool knife edge ridges......when you get to the overlook to the north and view the north ridge, the challenge is obvious. The final 250' up some excellent granite and metamorphic biotite was en excellent finish to the peak. It was about 5 and a half hours up from Lake Creek trailhead to the summit, a long way!  Several high Mountain glacial lakes were seen in the basins below all day long. Stunning views of the Elk Range also dominated the backdrop to the southwest, while you could also see clear to the Front Range and the Gore Range was to the North. This corner of the Sawatch was really isolated, and it was actually tough to pick out the back side of Holy Cross the area's only 14er. But you can see it poking up behind me while I stood on the summit of North Gold Dust Peak (13,400') The weather was so good, and It was great to be nice and high on the ridges all day long. All told I covered about 22 miles round trip over rugged and trailess terrain above the timber. This week was a very fulfilling training week. I'll be sure to be ready for Pakistan 2013, but I am going to carry out more training all winter on the peaks and camp on some summits too! I mountain biked nearly 45 miles Monday and Tuesday, and Played basketball and lifted Wednesday before getting the climbs in Thursday.....probably rest Friday before heading out into the mountains again this weekend after some snow falls.....Sunday will probably be fun up high in the fresh snow! Below is my Summit Video....enjoy!
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Categories2012 Travels and Book Events2013 14ers and Everest 2013 Skiing off Summits 14ers/13ers Colorado 14ers: High Bivys Project 2011 Everest 2012 Sleeping on the Summits II CA 14ers |
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