Wednesday, August 9, 2000 - Mt. Sherman ("The Big Easy")

Wednesday was supposed to be somewhat of a day off, even for those of us who chose to climb another fourteener.  A large portion of the group opted to do some rafting, but 8 of us headed over Hoosier Pass (Who's your pass!?!?!), past Fairplay, and up, up, up the road towards Mt. Sherman.  We piled into the back of Rick's truck and 4-wheeled it up to about 12,800 feet.

The group headed to the saddle south of the ridge to Sherman's summit.  Wanting to try something different, I opted to ascend the east face, directly up a slope with endless amounts of loose scree.  It was slow but direct, and I met the rest of the group on the ridge above after about an hour and fifteen minutes of climbing.

It was actually a pretty interesting climb the rest of the way to the summit.  The ridge was an easy scramble with just enough exposure to make it fun.  At the top we found a rock wall to huddle behind and a nice patch of snow to slide around in.  We had heard stories about large cairn monuments at the top, but we didn't really find anything impressive.  There is, however, a large flat area just down from the summit that is incredibly large.  Apparently a plane had even landed there once during a winter storm.

Todd decided to speed ahead and go for Mt. Sheridan, a high thirteener just south of the saddle.  Rick decided to catch up with Todd and the rest of us descended down the ridge to the saddle.

The rest of us waited down by the truck and checked out the mine ruins.  Rick and Todd weren't far behind and we all piled back into the back of Rick's truck.  We ran in to a bit of trouble with the land manager on the way down, claiming that somebody had broken through the gate that we had driven past early that morning.  Apparently we weren't supposed to 4-wheel our way to 12,800 feet, but no harm was done and our climb for the day had been a success.

Last Updated:  Friday, October 20, 2000