Dakota Hill (10,929) and Berrian Mountain (9,147) by Brian Schultz Sunday June 14, 2015

Dakota Hill:

Roundtrip mileage: 1.5 miles from Apex Road

Elevation gain: 525'

Start to finish: 45 minutes

Participants: Brian Schultz & grandson Tyler

We were hoping to drive up to Guanella Pass to see how much snow remained on Mt Bierstadt and possibly climb it, but were stopped by a bike race in Georgetown. The course went up and over Guanella Pass and when the last of the bikers rode by, we started up after them but quickly realized we'd never be able to pass them. We turned around and came up with Plan C. Plan B never materialized because we never got up to Guanella Pass- had we made it to Guanella and chosen not to climb Bierstadt, we would've climbed a couple peaks off Highway 285 on the way back to Denver.

I had Ryan Kowalski's trip report on Dakota Mountain handy so we headed to Central City. Finding the correct road to the ghost town of Apex was a bit confusing but we figured it out after a while (from Central City simply drive north out of town on Eureka Street). After several miles we turned left at a junction and stayed on the "Apex Valley Road", passing by a few cabins that comprised the ghost town and continued on the road to a switchback at 10,420'. We parked and at 11:45 began the short hike along the road to the summit. We reached the top in twenty minutes and walked around a fenced-in radio tower before stepping inside through the unlocked gate. The area inside the fence seemed to be the high point and we hung around for 10 minutes before departing. We got back to the truck at 12:30.

Berrian Mountain:

Roundtrip mileage: 3.8 miles

Elevation gain: 1,100'

Start to finish: 2 hours 35 minutes

Participants: Brian Schultz & grandson Tyler

We drove to Evergreen for lunch and continued south to Berrian Mountain, one of the peaks originally on our plan B list. We used Kirk Mallory's report for the approach but the residential streets on the west side of the peak were confusing to navigate. My GPS came to the rescue and we found the described pull-out off the road to park. This trailhead in Denver Mountain Parks is open to the public and we started up the signed trail at 3:30 PM. It's an excellent trail that heads east and south below the summit ridge and when it seemed we were going past the summit area, we began a bushwhack up the slopes. This was on easy terrain and we reached the summit at 4:30. The ridge holds several high points and we climbed up each one to be sure we hit the highest one. A point north of the summit waypoint in my GPS appeared to be a few feet higher. We stayed for 30 minutes enjoying the views, which were quite good for a lower elevation summit, especially toward Denver in the distance. The summit register was a large plastic jar that held an assortment of objects, definitely not your typical register.

On our descent we set a bearing and began another bushwhack to reach the trail below. We enjoyed scrambling up a rocky point just below the summit ridge and afterward came across an animal skeleton wedged tightly in the ground. Tyler tried to pull it out but couldn't budge it. We made it back to the truck at 6:05 and headed to Denver. Despite not being able to climb over 12,000 feet on any peaks because of all the snow, we had a great time over the last four days. The peaks we chose were fun and relatively easy, and best of all, Tyler wants to come back next year and climb some more peaks.

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