Staying in Fairplay made for a much later morning today, up around 5:30 am. Still on the trail by about 7:00 am as planned. Mt. Sherman was not necessarily one I was looking forward to, mostly because it doesn't seem like one of the real "pretty" peaks. However, ended up being a pretty good day. There are a handful of trails all around Sherman and I quickly got a little off course (if you are paying attention, no reason to miss the main trail...guess I was too wrapped up in the sermon I was listening to haha). Anyway, this got me up to a slope of pretty loose rock which I had to traverse across/backtrack to get to the main trail.
I picked the trail back up a little above the saddle between Sherman and Sheridan, where I met up with a nice guy named Paul who was visiting from Georgia and trying to get another 14er under his belt. The rest of the hike was pretty windy along the ridge, but luckily the air quality didn't seem to be too impacted by the nearby wild fires.
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| The trail leading to the summit. |
The summit came quickly (again, after some confusing mix of trails).
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| Me at the summit. |
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| Nice views along the trail. |
Then on to the descent. In my mix up earlier, I ended up missing a decently long patch of snow that I did not have to ascend, however I was now faced with getting down it to stay on the main trail down. I put on my microspikes and attempted to climb down backwards, but after about 2 slippery steps, realized that was not going to work. So I turned around and opted for glisading down...probably should have changed into pants, but was kinda stuck on the side of a mountain. So, ya...ended up with a little burn on the back of my legs from the ice, but not a huge deal. Descended a good amount of elevation quickly!
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| Hard to tell relative size of this slope...but here is the bottom of the snow patch I glisaded down. |
After returning to my car and heading out, I had a pretty cool bear sighting! I was driving along the dirt road with a river to the right and a slope up to my left. This bear was down by the river and then shot across the road and up the slope! I have seen a handful of wild animals before, but never a bear, so that was pretty cool. Sadly I did not have my camera in hand/ready so missed the photo opportunity, maybe next time!
As you can tell from my Hike Summary below, I have figured out some of the functionality of the Garmin eTrex, so the stats are a little more specific:)
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Hike
Summary
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Date:
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Thursday, June 20, 2013
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Mountain:
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Mt. Sherman
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Hike Start Time:
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7:12 AM
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Summit Time:
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9:13 AM
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Hike End Time:
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10:42 AM
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Miles:
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4.82
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Elevation Gain:
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1,998
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