Hiking 2:00:00 [4]
Will, Boris, and I climbed Mt.Princeton today. We started at about 9,000 feet and went up to the very summit of 14,197 feet. There are two trails to the summit, and we took the harder (but shorter) one of the two. By the looks of it, this trail has not been used for some time before we came along. We started off by following a stream up along a canyon. I went first, brushing past the nettles as quickly as possible. Then we were out in the open, following a rocky gulch up to the treeline. Then came one of the hardest parts, which was climbing up a very steep grassy and rocky ridge. The rest of the time we were contouring around the ridge and then clambering on the rocks at the top of it. One of the hardest parts mentally was climbing up the false peak, and then climbing down the other side of it. We couldn't contour around it because there were very steep and rocky drops on both sides, so we had to go across it to get to the summit point.
It took us about 3:50 to get up there (including 20-30 minutes total of breaks). We decided to go down using the other trail, which was indeed easier but less interesting. It took us about 2+ hours to get down to the Radio Tower, where we managed to hitch a ride from some nice folks to our car. The first stop was the Mt.Princeton hot springs.
