tl;dr: 291 miles and 82k feet of ascent. Pretty fun trip! I definitely am not acclimated as well as I could be to the higher elevations. 14ers make you appreciate oxygen ;)

Little video I've made

Track of my trek

I'll be adding a longer write-up on logistics and other details to my website in the next handful of days for those interested.

Background: Having grown up in Colorado, even prior to my thru-hiking days, I was pretty into peak bagging. I had summited something like 20 14ers before finding my actual love of long-distance trails.

As far as long-distance hikes in Colorado go, I've done the Colorado Trail a few times as well as the Continental Divide Trail. Everytime I trek through the collegiate peaks wilderness, the allure of 14er peak bagging calls!

On my first CT thru in 2014 I bagged 3 peaks to kill some time (I was far ahead of schedule). But as most thru-hikers will concede, peak bagging has limited appeal when you're converting calories into miles of trail progress. And while I largely don't think peak bagging is even close to the same vibe of thru-hiking, I wanted to do a different kind of long-distance hike. I wanted to do a long trail defined by peak bagging!

So I took the 160ish mile collegiate loop and added in trail mapping to the fourteen 14-thousand foot peaks (14ers) in the area. This collection of peaks is known as "Nolan's 14".

The Nolan's 14 is most commonly treated as an efficient running path between the 14 peaks, which yields around 100 miles when done directly as a clean line. As a competition, Nolans successfuls have 60 hours to try and bag all 14 peaks. Current FKTs are frighteningly fast.

Clearly, none of the competitive elements of the Nolan's 14 trail run have made it into my thru-hiking plans. But the elevation changes have :)

Trip report:

Day 0 (13 mi, 5000 ft ascent): Due to the Interlaken fire, the Colorado Trail eastern collegiate route was shutdown between twin lakes and CO 390. This cut off about 8 miles of the total trail (oh well!)

I got a ride to this starting point, and started hiking at 3 PM. I did a short 13 miles and camped for the night on Frenchman Creek Trail, a couple miles from the top of Mt Harvard.

Day 1 (21 mi, 7000 ft ascent): I was originally planning on doing Harvard, Columbia, and then drop down to Cottonwood Creek and take a high line up to Yale.

The weather was shit. I was getting pelted by wind and sleet. On my way up to Harvard, I also started to notice some real altitude symptoms. The tell tale signs of an altitude headache, as well as the all-too-familiar difficulty in finding oxygen. I munched an Acetazolamide tablet, and bagged Harvard. A short 2.5 miles of snow field traversing later and I was at Columbia. The sun had finally come out.

I also discovered that I lost my solar panel setup on the way to Columbia in a glissade. Turns out I didn't bother attaching it correctly to my pack and it tumbled off without me noticing ($10 offered, and you keep it, to anyone that retrieves it from the wilderness!)

At the peak of Columbia, I started eying the Yale ascent via the standard Nolan's line, but figured I didn't have that kind of ascent left in me on this first full day out, but could still do plenty of trail miles. I decided to swing back to the the Colorado Trail via the Horn Fork Basin trail and camp at the base of Yale to summit it the following morning. I got there around 6pm, ate some food, took an ibuprofen, and promptly slept.

Day 2 (24.5 mi, 7400 ft ascent): I started on Yale around 5:30 am. Super fun ascent! I think the east ridge was the most technical hiking I did on this trip, everything else was super tame.

It took me a couple hours to hit the top. Only got tricked by one false summit. Yay! I headed back down and hiked the Colorado Trail up to the base of Mt Princeton.

I slept terribly. I started on the ridge at 11,800 feet for the night, but the intensity of the wind made me seek a different location around 9 PM. Assuming I'd be out before anyone else in the morning, the flatest place I found was the trail at 11,700 feet, so I bivvied there until about 4 am, then packed up and started on Princeton.

Day 3 (23.2 mi, 6000 ft ascent):

I got to Princeton pretty quickly, and ran into a gaggle of folks on the way down. At this point, I also discovered that the "athletic tape" I had been using to tape hot spots on my feet was not actually athletic tape. It was maybe crack climbing tape, or something with absurd adhesive intensity. Regardless, it literally tore some large chunks of skin off of my feet. This was a first for me -- I've never had tape physically remove my upper layer of skin...

Anyway, I hobbled to Mt Princeton resort, ate some food, charged my phone and watch to 100% (no power bank/solar panel anymore), and grabbed some gauze and other tape to create artificial skin to allow my wounds to heal. Pain.

I hiked another 12 miles to the base of Mt Antero.

Day 4 (23 mi, 5800 feet ascent): I love Mt Antero. I took an absolutely gorgeous, dreamy hiking trail (Little Browns Creek trail) up to the Jeep road. There's then a super tame ascent up to Antero. The views are awesome, the grassy meadows below alluring. I really want to make some more intentional trips out to this area for some classic, type 1 fun backpacking! Really underrated!!

The traditional Nolan's line from Antero to Tabaguache looks pretty decent! Regardless, I decided I would prefer to stay fairly true to the lovely, placid hiking of the collegiate loop, with the intent for most of the peaks to be deviations from the classic loop. I headed over to the base of Mt Shavano.

Day 5 (22 mi, 5200 ft ascent): Shavano and Tabaguache were two of the peaks I bagged on my CT thru in 2014. They are relatively straight forward peaks, so I was pretty excited to cruise up and back down. I started at 4:30 am.

I made pretty good time, and ran into maybe 30 people on the way down. One person actually was startled to see me, as they thought they were the first person up for the day, having started at 3:30am. Alas! I started almost 2,000 feet higher than them that morning ;)

I finished off the two peaks (love them!), and cruised to highway 50 where I hitched into Salida for a resupply, to buy a power bank, and to grab a shower :)

Day 6 (27 mi, 6000 ft ascent): finally, a nice break from peak bagging! All I had to do was hike on some super beautiful trail!

As the Colorado Trail eastern route rejoins collegiate west and the CDT near Monarch Pass, you begin to enter some of the prettiest hiking in Colorado. I LOVE the CDT. Through this area it's pristine trail, with stunning views and great vibes. Yum! Give me more!!

Day 7 (26 mi, 6000 ft ascent): Did I say how pretty the trail is? It's so great! I cruised past Chalk Creek and Tunnel Lake. I camped somewhere close to Mt Kreutzer. Nothing but perfect, high-alpine trekking. It helped that I somehow had great weather for the entire time I was above 12,000 feet (aside: treeline in Colorado is consistently around 11,800 ft).

Day 8 (26 mi, 5500 ft ascent): I headed across the gorgeous ridge line to cottonwood pass. I got there by 9AM, and I hitched in to Buena Vista for a quick resupply. I was fortunate enough to get a hitch in immediately! I was dropped at a restaurant, scarfed some town food, resupplied for the next leg, and charged my phone and power bank for a bit, while determing the best place to hitch back to trail from.

Definitely not my easiest hitch out of town. Took me about an hour and a half to finally get a ride back to Cottonwood Pass. From there, I hiked another 16 miles, up and over Lake Ann Pass, to camp a few miles from the base of Huron.

Day 9 (19 mi, 5100 ft ascent): I started working my way toward the summit of Huron. At some point, a guy coming in the opposite direction asked me if I made it to the summit already. After chatting a bit, it turns out he walked off a switch back and started going down again. Fortunately, he only lost about 1 mi in the wrong direction. Oof.

I got to the top of Huron and there were a few recent graduates from Boulder up there. I chatted with them briefly, and then headed down with the intent of bagging La Plata Peak.

I made it to the base of La Plata Peak around 2PM, and the clouds were looking suspicious. I checked my Garmin weather and was informed there would be lightning and rain at 70% chance in the next 2 hours. I decided to setup my tarp, do some yoga, and listen to podcasts.

The storm came in. I'm glad I wasn't on the peak.

Day 10 (20 mi, 6800 ft ascent): I started ascending La Plata pretty early in the morning, and cruised back down. I also made my way over to Clohesy Lake where I could summit Missouri. The clouds were once again beginning to look ominous. I checked Garmin, and it informed me there would be no lightning, and only a 30% chance of rain! great!! I think I can trust it? I climbed up Missouri.

I was beginning to contemplate hitting Oxford and Belford then too, but decided to just have a chill night. I dropped down for a nice bivvy spot at Missouri Gulch (12k-ish feet).

On the way down I chatted with an ultra runner that did the ridge connection between Oxford and Missouri. He informed me that the ridge is mostly class 2, but it's easy to find yourself on class 5. Looks like a decent path to take if you want something a bit more technical and if your shoes aren't falling apart (as mine now were)!

Day 11 (32 mi, 11,200 ft ascent): I quickly summited oxford and belford in the morning. I then dropped down, and began my trek back on the CDT over Hope Pass and down to Twin Lakes. As I walked the road into Twin Lakes, signs were abound "Hey! It's peach season" and true to my namesake, I grabbed some Palisade Peaches before hitting the general store, charging my phone and power bank, and grabbing some calories for my last day.

I hung out in Twin Lakes for about 2 hours while I charged my devices. I ate some mediocre town food, and then was on my way. Weather reports looked good for the day, but questionable for the following day. I decided it was a perfect time to bag Mt Elbert at sunset.

What a great idea!!! I was alone my entire way up Elbert. I got to the summit right around 8:20 PM. The sun was beginning its symphony. It turned orange, and then red. The temperature dropped 10 degrees. Beautiful! For this brief moment in time, I was probably the tallest thing in the Continental US! I brushed away a small tear from my eye as the sun disappeared behind the horizon.

I began to descend Elbert and ran into two other people that had not quite made it there for sunset. I camped at 11,800 feet.

Day 12 (18.5 mi, 4800 ft): I slept in until 5:00 AM or so, and then headed out to Mt Massive. Oh, my God... the people! Turns out peak bagging in Colorado on a Saturday really can be a jarring experience.

On the way up to Mt Massive, I passed a couple hundred trucks and jeeps. These vehicles littered the path up the mountain like caricatures of car advertisements. Car commercials spend millions of dollars trying to achieve this vibe! Seriously, why had the doors been removed from a Jeep and then propped up against a tree, silhouetting a placid creek while surrounded by thousands of dollars in canvas, platformed tents? Who knows!!

Anyway, I dodged some trucks and finally got to a foot path that took me to Mt Massive. Per its name, there were Massive amounts of people up there.

I snacked on food, drank some water, and then headed down.

I got to the Leadville hatchery around 1:00, and scored a ride with elite athlete Erin Ton back to Leadville. Yay food! I then was able to hitch into Denver some hours later (thanks Anthony!!) Great trip overall!!