It was a harrowing, 14-hour climbing excursion via the toughest route up Mt Evans aka Mt Blue Sky.
OK, I actually just drove there. Mt Evans itself is 14,265' and it's one of the few high peaks you can drive to. The parking lot is at 14,150' and a short trail heads to the summit.
I did not take the trail: I just did this for the acclimatization and to scout it out. I spent about four hours in the parking lot wandering around and working on my laptop, but I wanted to save the summit for the next day.
My original plan for August 13 was to drive back to the parking lot in the morning, lock up my bike, drive back down, hike back up to the summit, and then take a leisurely downhill ride back to my car. Easy-peasy.
Except, when I got there that morning there were very heavy winds and I wasn't sure I wanted to follow through with Plan A.
So, I switched to Plan B: just hiking it from Summit Lake. That's about 5 miles RT with 2k' of (rollercoaster) gain and some scrambling. I started up that route but a) I was freezing my Krummholz off, and b) I didn't like the look of the weather. I could see the route and Mt Spaulding up above me, but I didn't want to risk getting rained on so I turned around.
I decided I'd try it the next day, but before I left I decided to see how difficult it was to bike up the paved road. As it turns out, I was acclimated enough and the road wasn't steep enough that it was only moderate difficulty. Before I knew it, I was just 500' lower than the parking lot. In fact, I could see and hear the tourons up there.
However, for the third time that day I looked at the weather and wimped out. It was a prescient decision: less than a couple minutes after I turned around it started to rain. That didn't deter a group from Colorado who were walking up the road, but I'm from Southern California and we don't get rain.
As with my 14er successes, I wasn't really feeling the altitude that much. I think part of it was the four hours I spent in the parking lot, but most of it was because a) I'd started the trip by going to 10k', and b) I'd subsequently spent a few weeks never going below about 5k' and also going to 8k' and 9k' briefly.
I also think August is not the time to try to do Colorado 14ers due to the monsoon weather. That sounds like something you could deal with if you think of balmy tropical isles when you hear "monsoon". No, what they get in Colorado is more the freezing ice rain style of "monsoon" and that's not my style.
