quandary peak hike

This past Sunday (8/2/09), I hiked up 14,265-foot Quandary Peak in Summit County, Colorado. Quandary was my third 14er. It’s located just south of Breckenridge, along CO 9. The trailhead is very handy to this main highway, so Quandary is one of the more popular 14ers. The peak is located in the 2.3 million acre White River National Forest. WRNF encompasses a huge area of ‘High Country’ in central Colorado and has ten peaks over 14,000 feet within its borders.

I found some conflicting data about this hike. Roach (Colorado’s Fourteeners: From Hikes to Climbs, Second Edition) lists Quandary as a 5.4 mile hike, roundtrip, and has the elevation at the summit as 14,265 feet. The WRNF official website, though, says it’s a 3.11 mile hike, one-way, and that the summit is 14,247 feet. According to the website, the trail starts at 10,917 feet. Regardless of who’s right, it’s a nice hike with a good trail all the way to the summit, and once you get to the top, the view is stupendous.

If you’ve ever checked out Roach’s book, which I’m pretty sure is considered the Bible for climbing 14ers in Colorado, you know that some folks take this whole business of bagging 14ers (there are over fifty) pretty seriously. For example, Roach says:

Purists accept the goal of not only climbing all the fourteeners, but gaining 3,000 feet on each one. This is a much harder goal… For example, consider Lincoln, Democrat, and Bross. Even if you are careful to start 1,000 feet below 12,000 Kite Lake on your initial climb of all three, you have only gained 3,000 feet on one of the three peaks. To gain 3,000 feet on all three, you will have to do this standard climb three times, or do alternate routes to the other two peaks on two more occasions.

Okie dokie.

I have to admit there's something wonderfully satisfying about standing on top of a 14,000-foot mountain that you've climbed under your own power, but I have no desire to climb all the 14ers in Colorado. I’ll be happy doing one or two a summer, but bagging all fifty-five of them just isn’t a goal that interests me. There’s someone that has climbed them all at least ten times. In 1997 a seven-year-old girl completed climbing all of Colorado’s 14ers. Dogs have climbed all the 14ers. Two guys climbed them all in 1995, observing the 3000-foot rule, in less than sixteen days. Good for all of them, but like I said, bagging all the 14ers just isn’t on my list of things to do before I die.

Now maybe if I knew I’d be the very first person to take a Terrible Towel to the summit of each 14er… Hmmmmm.