“Mascot Peak”

“Mascot Peak” (13,435 ft) and Mt. Yale, seen from the Cottonwood Pass Road on October 27th.

On Saturday Steve and I got out for what will probably be our (or at least my) last 13er summit of the year. Cold temps and an encouraging start to snow season conspired to shut down the fall peakbagging window a few weeks early this year. So in place of a few bigger goals we were trying to sneak in before the season change, we found ourselves just looking for an easy outing. “Mascot Peak” next to Mt. Yale made for a fun, quick morning leg-stretcher, capped off by a few ales at Eddyline to officially wrap things up.

Sunrise on Mt. Princeton. North faces were holding a decent amount of October snow, with at least a dusting on all aspects.

“Mascot Peak”, Mt. Yale’s shorter southern neighbor, had long been on the list of potential shoulder season slogs. Although there’s no trail to it’s summit, it’s about as easy as Sawatch 13ers get. All the day entails is a ~4,000 ft ascent directly from the Avalanche Gulch parking lot to the summit.

Avalanche Gulch aspens. All the snow and cold temps we’ve seen lately have pulled every last leaf off every tree.

Some parties elect to take the Colorado Trail all the way to the crest of Mt. Yale’s east ridge, run up to the summit of Yale from there, then descend over Mascot and head down its southeast slope. Because we were unsure of the wind situation up high and didn’t fancy being exposed all the way up Yale’s east ridge, we decided to peel off the Colorado Trail around 10,600 ft and head straight for Mascot..

Macot and it’s east ridge, seen from close to where we broke off the Colorado Trail.

After leaving the Colorado Trail it was down to a pleasant slog through the trees, a few small patches of snow, and then the talus fields of Mascot’s upper-east ridge.

Steve closing in on Mascot’s summit with Yale in back. A fine morning to be up in the Colorado alpine.

Jax dog on the summit, wondering if we were gonna tack on Mt. Yale or not.

After topping out and eating some lunch, we decided heading over to Yale looked like more trouble than it was worth. So on back down the east ridge we went before breaking off it early and descending an avy path straight back down to the parking lot.

Eddyline pumpkin ale. Tis the season.

To cap off our fine day in the hills, we headed to Eddyline and enjoyed a few of their seasonal refreshments. After a long time enjoying the sun on the patio and reminiscing about the summer, Steve and I went our separate ways.

All in all I managed to tack on 45 new 13ers in 2018 (54 total peaks above 12k) and hit the 400 mark on the 13er list a few weeks ago on “Electric Pass Peak”.

And with that we’re onto ski season…