Climbing Whetstone...all 12,516 feet!

...and it kicked my butt!!!! Not sure what the problem was, but this was definitely a hard one for me...Nick didn't think it was too bad, but we were certainly both tired when we got back to town!!!

Here is Whetstone form our Powderview condo in the winter (it's the highest one!!!)

The hike goes from the Ohio Creek Valley because private land on the Crested Butte side means there is no access. We passed the trail head at first as it wasn't marked, and had to back track to find it. The first mile or so follows the old Ohio Pass Railroad to a point where it looped around before climbing the pass. This wall is part of the climb up to the pass, I think.

Then it follows a fairly level path towards Whetstone (at least we thought it was fairly level on the way up..we changed our minds on the way back when we had to hike upwards again!). The hike is 12 or so miles long (and feels like more...) It follows a trail for a fair portion of the way, and you have pretty decent views of the mountain all the way through.

Eventually you have to strike off on your own to climb the last 2,000 vertical feet (seriously!). When we came out of the trees and had a clear view of where we were going, I almost had a heart attack (and it was justified!!!). We passed some deer on the way up and had some great views which improved the further in we got.

Here is a view of Whetstone from the trail.

After we cleared treeline, we pretty much headed up the ridge on the right in this photo.

This was the angle of the climb..no wonder I was having a hard time...Nick, Mr Mountain Man, on the other hand, took it all in his stride....! I did keep telling him that it was 45 degrees, but he didn't believe me...now I have proof!

It took us an hour and forty five minutes from clearing tree line to climb up the ridge. The first part was scrub like, the second was climbing up scree (or talus) depending on your definitions...rock in other words, at a steep angle!

I didn't dare look down and was not looking forward to the climb down!

Some of the rock we had to scramble over...!

This view is of Mt Carbon and Axtel, and back towards the Castles. We hiked past both on the way up.

And this is towards the west and the town of Crested Butte over the ridge at the top...

Here I am finally...all smiles! I knew I would make it, it was just going to take me a while...

Nick ventured further along the ridge than I did!

While we were up there, we saw some people cresting the pointed ridge in the background and start heading down...they were on the Whetstone Massif, but a little lower than us.

We also saw a small plane - it passed right over the top of us...Nick managed to capture some of it on the camera!!! It was amazing how low it was/or how high we were!

Surprisingly, we were higher than Mount Crested Butte! The horizontal road is the road into town, the vertical road is the one to Skyland where we live...we were only a little higher though than West Elk Pass (12,490)which we had climbed from Aspen a couple of weeks ago...it felt like a lot more

This view is over Crested Butte Mountain towards Aspen...

Coming down we saw a sure sign that summer is coming to an end...these were the first aspens we had seen changing...a week later, they are even changing here in town...and there are more every day...

The forecast for tomorrow (Monday Sept 10) is cloudy and scattered showers with highs in the 50s and lows on the 20s...the first freeze of the season (noooooo!!!!)...I think it will be a shock to the system...we have barely been out of shorts since we arrived in June...maybe now we can concentrate on getting that kitchen finished since we FINALLY have countertops that fit - I only ordered them at the beginning of June...long story which I will recount once we are finished!!!

Unfortunately, since we haven't sold one of the units, Hawaii and New Zealand will have to wait and we will have to be ski bums this year...rough life, huh? We have to decide which ski passes we want this week to get them at a cheaper price, but I'm not ready to start thinking about winter yet! So in order to delay it a little more, and since two of my jobs end at the end of September, we have decided to delay fall and head for Portugal!!!! We fly to Lisbon and 80 degree temperatures on October 2. After that we will head for London, and then Devon to visit my brother Steve and his family, Sarah, Isabella, Givit and DB. From there, Nick will head back to work, and I will spend a few weeks visiting family in Hull...after October/early November in Hull, fall and winter in Crested Butte will look great! Looking forward to getting the Lisbon, London and Devon photos on the blog...