St. Vrain Mountain

St. Vrain Mountain is located in the Indian Peaks Wilderness in the Roosevelt National Forest in Colorado. The trailhead is located 40 miles northwest of Boulder. The trail headed steadily up, following a mountain stream with wildflowers growing alongs its banks. After following the stream for two hours, you start to wonder, "where is all this water coming from" because thousands of gallons have flowed by already. We started to get elevation sickness between 9,000 and 10,000 feet. The Jack Russell Terriers did not seem to be effected. We stopped and rested more often, and the sickness left us as we got above 10,000 feet. Bandit russelled up a ground bird at the pass just south of the Rocky Mountain National Park which borders the lower part of the summit. We had hiked for four hours, and we saw the summit for the first time at 11,000 feet. The view back down was magnificent, and we still had over a 1,000 feet to go to the summit. We were quite tired, but if we didn't go now we would never make the summit.

To reach the summit from here required climbing a half a mile of snow through 10 foot high evergreen shrubs. We crossed the snow and came to large 2-3 foot rocks stacked all the way to the summit. The last half mile was like thosands of dump trucks had dumped the rocks to the top. Invisible rivers ran under the rocks, but you could not see them only hear the water flowing under your steps. The dogs hopped from rock to rock chasing ground squirrels that had no tails which disappeared under the large rocks. Pristine wilderness with some of Colorado's last moving glaciers were visible to the west of the summit which made this our most memorable hike. You now realized where all the water below was coming from. The peak is 12,126 feet, and the mountain air is very thin. Mountain sickness can cause problems for some people. After resting for an hour, the cool mountain air and the time of day made us head back down the trail. Our Jack Russell Terriers hurried back down the mountain, but we moved slowly back to the trailhead. This hike is extremely difficult and required nine and a half hours to complete. This hike should be taken serious because there is only one way to get there, and that is through the wilderness. It took several days to recover from the hike, but it was well worth it because Colorado is like Jack Russell Terrier Heaven.