Missouri Mountain and Clear Creek Campout

With summer nearing an end, my husband realized we had yet to camp with our families this summer. We quickly called everyone and made a plan to meet up Clear Creek Road outside of Buena Vista for a weekend campout.

Justin's sister and I began plotting an additional adventure which required us to meet a day early and climb a fourteener, Missouri Mountain (14, 067'). Missouri Mountain is a ten-mile round trip hike with 4, 500 feet of elevation gain. We set a date, and met for the hike. My sister and two friends also decided to join, making us a party of 5 strong women and 2 dogs.

Our alarm clocks went off at 4:00 am, and we huddled around the stove to make coffee. We were on the trail by 5:30, making good time up to Missouri Mountain's summit. The trail was great and well-maintained; we even passed by the Colorado 14er Initiative Group working on the trail. Once at the scree field, however, the trail became steep with loose gravel. We took our time and made it to the ridge quickly. The ridge is exceptionally long and beautiful, and I enjoyed walking the spine until I saw the final scramble, which required a bit of climbing. The guidebook calls this a class 2 climb, and it didn't say anything about any climbing - or scrambling for that matter.

Unfortunately, Loki (my puppy) and I didn't feel like we could maneuver the climb together, so we stayed back and didn't reach the true summit that day. We did, however, enjoy the beautiful views on our very private "false summit," only feet lower than the actual summit.

After the hike, my friends left and my family arrived. The next day we took our stand-up paddle boards down the road to Clear Creek Reservoir and played around. My mom and mother-in-law took to the boards and had a blast. That night, we roasted marshmallows and enjoyed some family time.

Mount Belford

To celebrate our second wedding anniversary, my husband and I decided to climb a mountain. Late June is still pretty early for mountain climbing, especially with all the late season moisture we got this winter, but we decided we would go for it anyways.

We chose Mount Belford (14,067'), accessible down Clear Creek Road outside of Buena Vista, Colorado. We arrived late Friday night and camped right off the road about a mile past the trailhead. With seven miles and 4,000 feet of elevation gain ahead of us, we went to bed early that evening.

In the morning, we got an early start, hiking the first mile and a half of switchbacks in the dark. The water crossing was very high, so we took a half-mile detour to see if there was a better spot to cross - there's not! So we took off our shoes and crossed the icy knee-deep water. After the water crossing we quickly made it to tree-line and began our ascent of Mount Belford.

We saw several other groups on the trail, but the mountain wasn't too busy. We made it to the top in time for lunch, but the clouds started building around us. We decided not to bag two peaks in one day, and we left Mount Oxford for another day.

I was grateful for the icy water crossing on the way down because my feet were sore from the first fourteener of the season. After a wonderful hike, we made it back to van-trouble; it wouldn't start. It turns out we had jostled the battery lose on the washboard road. Luckily, Justin had it up and running with enough time for us to make our dinner reservation at Mount Princeton Hot Springs. Of course, we soaked in the over-priced hot springs, too.

It was a wonderful anniversary, and I am looking forward to many more adventures to come.