I think the route will reveal itself as we go.
Mount snuffles is a prominent mountain near Ouray, Colorado in the U.S.
which is over 14,000 feet high, more than 4,300 meters.
Audrée had never climbed a 14er before
so we decided to try to reach its summit while on a road trip through Colorado in late July.
We're at the lower trailhead for Mount Sneffles
and we're about to climb up to 14,150 feet to one of the highest peaks in the region.
It’s 7 o'clock which gives us a nice buffer to get up to the summit
and off before the showers develop in early afternoon.
It tends to happen around 1pm pretty much like clockwork every day.
So we are planning to be back down by the car hopefully by about noon.
We're just prepping all of our gear.
We’re taking water of course.
I’ve got a spare water filter as well so I can pull water on route.
Lots of food.
I’m carrying a paper map.
I always like to do that in case i want to reference that if my phone happens to die.
I’ve also got my first aid kit of course with a whistle, a lighter, things like that.
My usual kind of essentials that I carry with me like my blister kit.
I’ve got my Inreach satellite communications device,
an emergency bivvy, as well as a headlamp just in case.
Some spare sunscreen and a hardshell in case we do get caught out in the rain
and some other warmer clothing.
I’ve got some arm warmers on as well here.
So this is all the stuff that I always carry with me whenever I’m doing a big backcountry
trip like this.
In the sort of colder months I would also carry probably a puffy jacket as well.
But today's gonna be quite warm so I’m more concerned about staying hydrated today
and protecting myself from the sun.
Especially up here at elevation.
The UV rays are much higher up here at elevation so you really have to protect yourself.
How are you doing?
Good. Making myself a little strawberry lemonade.
Nice. Some electrolytes?
I’m just about ready. I just gotta try to do something with my very dirty hair.
We approach the mountain from an altitude of about 10,800 feet or 3,300 meters
through Yankee Boy Basin.
Our route on the way up would follow the southwest ridge to the summit,
a Class 3 scramble with considerable exposure and route finding required.
We’d then take the easier standard route back down a series of rock-filled couloirs
before running back down to our car.
Looks like somebody's filming a truck commercial here.
Done with the road approach.
You can see our route up there and somehow we're traversing this ridge.
Petty amazing!
Quite literally breathtaking.
Literally breathtaking.
Blue Lakes down below.
That's a an alternate approach, a little bit longer but it looks like a beautiful approach.
But we are going to be scrambling up there somewhere.
We're gonna start to pick our way across this ridge here.
It’s not totally obvious where to go from this
perspective but I think the route will reveal itself as we go.
There's somebody just up out of us here too.
So this is a Class 3 route.
You don't need ropes or any climbing gear but this section here there's a little bit of loose rock.
So I’m giving Audrée some space and staying over as far as I can to the side.
It probably would have been nice to have helmets for this section here.
So we think we have to down climb a bit here.
Looks like good hand holds on the right.
A couple of big moves down there.
We didn't film for... for safety reasons.
For high anxiety reasons.
But that was fun.
I’m standing still and I can't breathe.
Deceived again by another false summit, but there it is up there.
How do you feel?
I can't breathe.
Yeah, the air is thin up here, eh? Yeah it's getting hot.
How was that? -That was adventurous. -Yea!
Okay, so we made it to the top of Sneffles at just over 14,000 feet.
I think we're at 14,155 feet
and this is Audrée’s first 14er!
Okay, time to head back down.