Mount Audubon (13,223) & Paiute Peak (13,088) by Brian Schultz Thursday August 14, 2014

Roundtrip mileage: 8.75 miles from Mitchell Lake trailhead

Elevation gain: ~ 3200'

Start to finish: 7 hours 45 minutes

Participants: Colin Levey and Brian Schultz

While visiting Colin and Lee-Anne in Australia last November, we talked about getting our Aconcagua group together again to do some climbing in Colorado. It started out hopeful but as time progressed, everybody's schedules got busy. Colin was coming to the U.S. regardless, but in the end Pete Krzanowsky was the only other one who could join us, and only on Saturday. Colin did meet up with another Aconcagua member of our group- after flying into Los Angeles, he drove to Colorado and along the way stopped in Utah to visit Paul Greene. My schedule was busy too, I was just glad to be able to squeeze in four days of climbing with Colin before my wife and I departed for Europe.

The forecast in the Indian Peaks Wilderness today called for 60% chance of storms/showers between 12:00 noon and 5:00 PM, not unusual in the summer monsoon season. We left Boulder at 5:30 AM and arrived at the permit pay station at 6:30. We dropped off Colin's car at the Long Lake trailhead parking lot, which would save a little mileage if we did the loop route that included Mt Toll and Pawnee Peak. Adding those peaks would certainly depend on the weather and our energy level.

We drove further up the road to the Mitchell Lake trailhead and began our climb at 6:55. I wasn't too wild about all the rocks on the Mitchell Lake trail but it's a well traveled trail and it goes all the way to the summit of Audubon. We arrived on Audubon's summit at 9:45 and took a break before heading down the connecting ridge to Paiute Peak. The ridge wasn't hard but it was a bit rough and slow going. We reached the saddle at 10:25 and Paiute's summit at 11:25 and continued over to another point on Paiute that looked like it might be higher.

I had no information on what the connecting ridge to Mt Toll entailed and it had been completely hidden in a low cloud cover all morning. So when the clouds suddenly parted and gave us a good look, we decided the steep ridge and the worsening weather were too risky to make an attempt. We were both tired anyway and now debated whether to return over Audubon or find a way down from Paiute.

There are lots of cliff bands below Audubon and Paiute and we didn't like the idea of finding a route through them if the weather turned on us before getting back to Audubon. So we headed down Paiute's south ridge at 11:45 and descended the slopes about 1,800' to a trail below in the distance, which turned out to be the Blue Lakes trail. There were lots of lingering snowfields below Paiute and they were steep, but we found a way around them.

Once we reached the trail, we encountered many day hikers on their way to the lake. It soon started raining and many of the youngsters we passed by were only wearing large plastic bags as rain gear. By 1:35 it was pouring. We were glad to be off the steep slopes of Paiute and especially glad we didn't return over Audubon. We got back to the parking lot at 2:40.

We saw a moose on the drive to Nederland and then took the slow but scenic route from there to Idaho Springs for our next day's climb.

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