Feature: Missouri Mountain Mixup by David Lien

Missouri Mountain mix-up

Missouri Mountain mix-up

By David A. Lien

I often asked myself why I wanted to climb mountains but soon realized there was no need. Such questions are unanswerable, and are posed only by those who have never done it themselves–Joe Simpson, This Game of Ghosts.

The author on the summit of Mt. Belford

A view of Mt. Belford

and Belford Gulch

Map showing

the area referenced. TOPO! maps are courtesy of National Geographic Maps and are used by permission of NGS maps.

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Missouri Mountain (14,067´) is located in the Sawatch Range three miles east of Huron Peak (14,012´) and 1.25 miles southwest of Mount Belford (14,197´), but it wasn’t recognized as a separate mountain until 1956, when United States Geological Survey measurements distinguished “ridgelike” Missouri Mountain from her northeast neighbor Mount Belford and the surrounding terrain.

The standard route up Missouri is a ten-mile round trip through 4,450 feet of elevation gain. Not a bad workout to prepare for climbing Mount Rainier, which I summited just twelve days later (but that’s another story). Starting out from the 9,640-foot Missouri Gulch trailhead at 4:30 a.m., I crossed over Clear Creek and hiked up into Missouri Gulch to the 12,600-foot level, where there’s a “fork in the road.”

Going southeast takes climbers to 13,220-foot Elkhead Pass, and venturing west brings them to a 13,700-foot saddle on Missouri’s northwest ridge. The terrain above tree line was still mostly snow-covered and hard-crusted during this June 7th, 2003, climb, and visibility was limited due to gusting winds and low clouds. However, the weather was improving so I continued climbing. As often is the case, I was alone, content, and the weather gods were on my side.

Unaccompanied peak bagging is not considered a wise practice by many Colorado outdoors types, but as a solo hiker-climber you avoid mundane everyday distractions and embrace humanity’s innate evolutionary sense of adventure and wanderlust. As John Muir said, “Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness.”

Colorado climber David Elkins thinks so, too. “Although it is not considered prudent, I climbed all of the 14ers alone, and I usually climbed them by nonstandard routes. I chose to do this as a way to enjoy the solitude of nature and to see more wildlife. I consider the outdoors to be a sort of sanctuary” (T&T, Winter, 2006-2007, p. 7). It takes courage and daring to push repeatedly off into the unknown on your own like that, but the potential rewards are priceless.

In “The Solitary Way,” Outside magazine contributor Jack Turner tells us about them: “No one knows where I am, for the simple reason that I don’t know exactly where I’m going. Not knowing is a key ingredient in this game. It allows freedom from order and schedules, from what I expect and what I am obliged to do: The nematodes, the leaves, and the minnows go about their business quite oblivious to my complicated world. Indifferent. Soon I will be more like them” (April, 2003). John, David, and Jack know that going solo—and not always knowing where you’re going—is often the only way to get somewhere worthwhile.

By 9:00 a.m. blue skies appear, and a summit poked out of the clouds in the distance, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right one. Based on the admittedly imprecise Colorado’s Fourteeners route map I was using, and my seemingly careful efforts at following it, the peak I was seeing couldn’t possibly be nearby Mount Belford? The two summits (I seemed to recall) looked nothing alike, but I wasn’t sure. At any rate, I wanted to climb Missouri Mountain because the photos from my first (October 2000) ascent hadn’t turned out.

I continued climbing and ended up reaching the summit of Mount Belford instead of Missouri Mountain, having “forked” southeast instead of west while down in Missouri Gulch, but at the time I still wasn’t sure and decided not to ponder the question too long, not remembering exactly what Missouri’s summit looked like anyway. The Colorado Mountain Club’s Guide to the Colorado Mountains describes the route I followed: “A longer, gentler route to Belford is to continue south on the trail to Elkhead Pass at 13,200 feet. From the pass head east then arc north to gain the rock outcropping of the summit” (10th ed., 2000, p. 190).

After spending thirty minutes on the summit without another climber in sight—which wasn’t unexpected given that most fourteener aficionados tend to be fair weather types—I decided to take a “shortcut” down the mountain. Shortcuts are almost never a good idea on fourteeners or any other mountains. Because I was still inexplicably thinking that Mount Belford was Missouri Mountain, I traversed a ridge to the east and dropped down into what would have been Missouri Gulch, if this had been Missouri Mountain, but the gulch in question was Belford Gulch.

It didn’t take long to realize that where I was and where I wanted to be were definitely not the same place. Luckily, Belford Gulch runs north, like Missouri Gulch, and comes out somewhere on Chaffee County 390, which I could follow back to the trailhead, assuming I was able to negotiate the gulch and get out to the road safely.

In Belford Gulch I encountered an elk, which you almost never see on standard 14er routes, and my camera’s motor died. Had this malfunction occurred twelve days later on Mount Rainier, or just over three weeks later on Mount Kilimanjaro (yet another story), many once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities would have been forfeited, like an elk photo on this day. During all of my fourteener and other climbs I’ve only encountered elk a handful of times, even though Colorado has more elk per square mile than any other state.

In his book On The Wild Edge, my skilled bow- and elk-hunting friend David Petersen writes, “While elk don’t seem to fear the smell of dogs—no more than they fear coyotes—the stench of humanity, apropos, fills them with dread and caution” (172). Although rarely seen from standard fourteeners trails, during the fall elk are likely to be heard. “All who have heard it,” David says, “agree that the shrill, brassy blast of a bull elk’s bugle is vocal magic, one of the most thrillingly mysterious sounds in nature, to my ears equaled only by the chilling nocturnal chorus of a wild timber wolf or the lonely wails of loons on a moon-mirrored north-country lake” (185).

Continuing down to near tree line where the elk had been, I followed its tracks to a faint overgrown trail that weaved a twisted and tangled path down through steep, well-cliffed terrain to Clear Creek, now swollen with spring runoff, but just a stone’s-throw from the road. Without seeing the elk and then following it to this nearly invisible trail—most likely the only safe way out of the basin—getting down might have taken hours longer or resulted in serious injury (or death) and a night or more trapped in this high mountain basin in the lofty Sawatch Range.

Elk and other wild animals, like humans, oftentimes follow the path of least resistance, using trails and other natural travel-ways when available—or maybe this one was just lending me a helping hand? No matter, I figured that following Cervus elaphus canadensis might lead to a safe way out of the basin, and I guessed correctly. On to Clear Creek. After nearly an hour of searching for a suitable crossing, I waded in and was very nearly swept off my feet.

Struggling across, fighting the fast-moving current the whole way, I dried off while walking along Chaffee 390 for a mile-and-a-half to the trailhead. It had been a long day—over nine hours of climbing and hiking, from 4:30 a.m. to 1:40 p.m.—and even though I was never truly lost, the thought of descending Belford Gulch into some distant, unfamiliar mountain valley was unappealing.

On the other hand, it would have been an excellent fourteener climbing adventure, as all difficult journeys with an unknown outcome or destination tend to be. And as someone far more poetic than I said, climbing a fourteenerer “is like love—anticipated with pleasure, experienced with discomfort, and remembered with nostalgia.” Another wise soul adds, “Sometimes you have to lose yourself to find yourself.” I hope to lose, and find myself amidst Colorado’s mighty fourteeners for years to come. P

David Lien has climbed all fifty-four Colorado fourteeners, the fifty state highpoints, and six of the Seven Summits. He turned back at 25,200 feet on the north/Tibet side of Everest in 2006.