WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Off the Trails: Four 14ers in Four Days at 14

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Join Nicole Sighiartau as she discusses some of her wildest experiences in the great outdoors! This week she shares her journey up each of the 14ers she hiked the summer that she was 14. 

You're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome to Off the Trails. I'm Nicole Sigiratow and I'll be your adventure buddy as we discuss some of my wildest stories for my outdoor endeavors. This week I'll be talking about the summer where I hiked five separate 14ers over the course of five days. Now, this was not consecutive by any means. it was very much spread out over the course of the summer. But 514ers is the most I've ever done in a summer. And I have done that since then. I did that last summer. I also did five, four of which I did in one day. But that's a different story. But anyway, yeah, it was a super fun summer. I really got more

into hiking. And it was great. But before we get into that, I'm going to talk about my trail marker for the week. And my trail marker was watching both the sunrise and the sunset in the same day. And that was yesterday. I personally really, really love sunrises and sunsets. I just think watching the sunrise is a great way to start your morning, gets you off bright and early, hopefully, unless it's winter. And in which case, the sunrise is kind of late here. So not fantastic. But it is, it feels like summer. And so the sun's, sunrises at 624 in the morning, which is decently early, especially if you want to get there before it's up. So I woke up at 545. And it wasn't the most spectacular sunrise ever, I will say, it was

pretty average, quite possibly below average. But it was still really nice to be up and early with it still being cool outside. It was actually fairly chilly. I think it was around. I think it was around 43 degrees, but it was windy. And so it was chilly. I'll just say that. I got pretty cold. And then the sunset was actually a pretty good sunset. I watched that from a higher vantage point, so I got to see it better. And it had warmed up by that point. So it was just a beautiful temperature. Some of the clouds, well, not really cloud. Some of the chemtrails from the planes got pretty red. And so that was beautiful. But yeah, no, it was just super fun to watch the sunset and the sunrise in the same day.

I know that I do this more often than I think I do. But when you do it intentionally, it's just more enjoyable and it feels more special. I'm trying to think of the best sunrise sunset combo I've ever had in a day. Oh, I don't know. Probably, probably while hiking. I think, you know, okay, so one of these was hiking up Mount Whitney and we got a beautiful sunrise over the Owens Valley looking out towards Death Valley. So that's where the sun rises. And then the sunset, we were not on the mountain, but we were driving home from Whitney because we did it in a day and we got a beautiful sunset over the desert. So I would say that's probably one of the top combos that I have. There's probably a more spectacular one that I'm just not thinking of. But yeah, I love watching the sunrises and the sunset. So if you haven't done that in a while, I would highly recommend you do that soon. So on to the 14ers.

My goal for that summer, I was 14 years old and I wanted to do four 14ers in four days over the summer. So my dad and I went to the San Juan Mountains in Colorado. I've talked about the them quite a bit. I would highly recommend visiting, especially if you have a four-wheel drive vehicle, because then you can do all the cool mountain passes, and that's super fun. Obviously, don't do anything. You don't feel comfortable on, but yeah, this is our first time going to the San Juan's in a long time. My dad and mom used to ice climb in Urey, which is one of the mountain towns. It's on the western side of the San Juan's. I'm pretty, yeah, west-ish side of the San Juan's. And so they used to ice climb there. And I think I was there when I was a little, little baby, but I don't remember that, obviously. So this is my first time

going. And just driving up towards those mountains for the first time was incredible because I've never been to Canada or Alaska. But in my brand, I was like, whoa, it looks like the Canadian Rockies. They are very jagged peak still because it's a younger range. And They're just, it's beautiful, just driving up for the first time. And so for my 14th birthday, my dad had gotten me a Colorado 14ers book with all of the Colorado 14ers. And before this summer, we had only climbed one of them, Long's Peak, which is in the front range, and that's in Rocky Mountain National Park. And we did the keyhole route. That was super fun. Such a blast. But anyway, we decided to go to the San Juan's because there's quite a few easier ones there.

Some that are even right next to each other, such as Red Cloud and Sunshine Peak, which were the first two that we did. But we wanted to go over there because it would be easy to knock some out. And you can disperse camp over there, which I've talked about in the past, which is basically you're on a dirt road. It's on BLM Land, Bureau of Land Management Land. And so you can just pull off to the side of the run camp so long as you're not really in the way. And you can stay on that portion of land, I guess, for up to 14 days. do have to move. So you do provide all of your own amenities. It's not real camping. It is, it is real camping. But I mean, there's no designated camp spot. So we did this because we wanted

to acclimate a little bit, and it's up high at elevation. So we camped at Alta Lakes for the first night to acclimate a bit. And then we had, I think, one day of just kind of doing some trails before the before our attempt on red cloud and sunshine so we camped at the trailhead i believe it's called grisly gulch trailhead i could be completely wrong that could be for another 14 or over there but we camped at the trailhead and there was this younger guy and he had a drone he was flying that around that was pretty cool. And then this older guy who had also hiked it. They were separate, but they ended up hiking it together, kind of. And so they were over there and we talked to them for a bit. And before we knew it, there were some snowflakes flying through the air. And my daughter

were like, oh, whatever, it's early June. This was June 8th, June 9th. It doesn't really matter. the snow is going to disappear. We're going to be just fine. So June 8th started snowing around 8 p.m. And it was accumulating quite a bit. But my dad and I went to bed. We're like, oh, we'll wake up in the morning and it all be gone. Or maybe not gone, but it won't be a significant amount of snow. And boy, were we wrong, because I think it snowed a solid eight inches, I think is what my dad said. I could be wrong. This was four years, five years ago at this point. But the car was completely covered with snow. The ground was totally covered in snow. And so we ended up deciding to not go for the summit that day. So we drove into Lake City, which is a little town close by, probably 10 miles away from there. I got a muffin. It was a pretty good muffin. And then we kind of just hung around. Creed and Lake City area all day. And then we came back to the trailhead that night, camped again. And then the next morning, it was time to go for the summit. So I had this lingering cough that had

been going on for quite a while before hiking this. And I was not doing too great at the start of the hike. My throat was hurting really, really badly. And I remember just coughing a lot. I really think it was the cold air because once it started to warm up a bit, I did feel better. But the trail takes you through this valley that's filled with all these pine trees and there's like some avalanche debris on the side. And so you go up this valley and then you enter this meadow area that once you get into late summer would just be absolutely covered in wildflowers, which is probably gorgeous, and I really want to go back and do it then. But you get up to this meadow, and then eventually we had to cross a snow field, but you get over to this rocky portion, and then it switch backs up to the top

of Red Cloud Peak. So that's the first one that you hit. Oh, maybe it's sunshine. No, it is Red Cloud. So that's the first one that you hit, Red Cloud Peak. It's 14,000, three feet tall. So just barely a 14er. both of them are just barely a 14ers and so we got to the top took a picture and then you go down the saddle and then you go up to sunshine which is 14,000 and one feet tall so that is the shortest 14er in Colorado which is pretty cool and from there technically you are supposed to then go back down the saddle go back up red cloud peak and then go down the trail that you came on. However, However, there was, there's this valley between the two peaks and it's just this scree loose, rocky kind of a trail, not really a trail. It's definitely not a trail. But my dad and I

ended up going down that way. And we had, we had hiking poles, so we were just fine. But we went down this scree field, which then kind of connects you back to the main trail. You can work your way over and you, you figure it out. It's not bad. But there were some abandoned mining shacks, which is pretty cool. The San Juan's has had quite a bit of mining history. But yeah, no, it was a beautiful, beautiful hike. There's some sort of endangered butterfly over there. I remember reading that on a trail sign at the trailhead. But yeah, so we did those two in one day, and we knocked out two of the four 14ers. You're listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. And let's get back to the other two 14ers. So we had done

those two and we wanted to definitely do at least another one in Colorado that summer because our fourth one was going to be Mount Whitney because I do that every two years. And so it was time to do it again. But we wanted to check off another off of our list. And so I was looking through my book and I see Mount Evans. And I thought, oh my gosh, this sounds great. So I, I don't, I told my dad, we should go do Mount Evans. If you're not aware with the geography of Colorado, Mount Evans is in the front range, which means it's very close to Denver, and we were not very close to Denver. We were pretty, pretty far away from Denver. And yet somehow, my dad and I, we basically drove the I-70 all the way to Dylan Reservoir.

Lake Dylan. I think the town is just called Dylan. I'm fairly certain. So we drove over there and we camped kind of over by the lake and it was just a beautiful camp spot. We made a fire, had some good sausages for dinner. And the plan was to go to bed, wake up early, drive to the trailhead, and then hike Mount Evans. So we do that, fall asleep. And then I'm awakened by my father the next morning and he was pretty angry. He had done some of his own research because he woke up pretty early and he's like, Nicole, the road to Mount Evans is closed. We can't do Mount Evans. Also, it's still another two hours away. So he was pretty annoyed with me to say the least at my pick for R-14er, especially because I hadn't looked up to double check that the road to get up.

to the trailhead had been closed. So my dad always has a plan. And so he's like, we should go do Mount Albert, which is the tallest mountain in Colorado. And it is the second highest 14er in the lower continuous 48 states. Matt Whitney is the tallest. So he said, we're going to go to Albert didn't really give me an option to say no. We were just, we were driving over. That was the plan. So, Albert is south. Let's see here. It's southwest of Frisco. So Friscoe is the town that Lake Dillon, Dillon Reservoir is in. So you go southwest and you get to Ludville, which is kind of the closest town to the, oh my gosh, what's the range called? Is it called the 10-mile range? I am not certain. Hang on a second. Let me look up what the ranges that Albert is nestled in. But Albert, it's pretty popular, and so we weren't certain if we were

going to find a camping spot. All right, or not a camping spot, but a place to park our car. So Mount Albert is in the Sawwatch range, and it has an elevation of 14,438 feet. So, we get to the trailhead. It's kind of late, late for us. I think we started hiking around 8 a.m. maybe 8.30. But it's a very short trail. I believe it's only, maybe, is it seven miles round trip? Or maybe it's seven miles one way. But it's very short and very, very steep. So it was a just, you were constantly going uphill the entire time. And there were so many false summits on Mount Albert. I believe there were four false summits. And I had kind of broken away from my dad at this point and was hiking by

myself. But it was really disheartening because you would get to the top of one false summit and then, bam, there was another one. But the trail starts out pretty low in elevation. I want to say around 8, 9,000 feet because you're in the tree line for a while. And so you kind of switch back your way up through there, very steep switchbacks. And then it pops you out onto this meadow-ish area. And you snake up through that until you get to the rocky portion of the trail, which is basically the rest, which is the rest of the way to go up to the summit. And then over there you have lots of little switchbacks. But again, very, very steep. And so I beat my dad to the summit by 16 minutes. I don't remember exactly, but I beat him by a lot because I ended up breaking away once we got to the Rocky section

since he was talking to some people we met on the trail who were Romanian. Funnily enough, my family is Romanian. And so, yeah, Mount Albert. It was a steep hike. I personally am not really inclined to do it again, but I'm glad we did. And it's done with. So those were the three 14ers that we had done in Colorado. And then our plan was to do Whitney in July. And so my dad and I ended up getting an overnight pass for Whitney. And we had never camped on the summit. it, but the weather was absolutely perfect. We were looking at it. No thunderstorms. Nothing. It was going to be warm. So we just carried up our sleeping bags, two little sleeping pads to lay on, a tarp to put that on, and we hiked ourselves up to the top of Whitney. We started around nine in the morning, and I believe I made it

up there by 3.30. I made really, really good time once I got to the backside. I took off and I beat my dad to the summit by 40 minutes. I was really zooming. I probably should have been carrying more weight looking back on it. I should not have been moving that fast, especially because we had only really acclimated for one day beforehand. But it was just one of my favorite experiences of climbing Whitney ever. I just got to the summit and was able to sit there. for a while and talked to some random people. I talked to this girl who's doing the Pacific Crest Trail, which she was pushing it. I mean, it was July 11th when we summited and she was just now getting to Whitney. So I was like, you've better get to move on because you're going to get

caught in some snowstorms if you don't hurry up. But we had a beautiful sunset and a beautiful sunrise on the top of Whitney. It was so, so cool because the mountain cast this huge shadow for the sunset. You could just see it going for miles. And it was really fun. So that was our fourth 14er. And because we had done it in two days, we had done the four 14ers in four days. And I was happy. I was satisfied and couldn't ask for anything more. And then we went on another trip to Colorado that summer. We went in August because I was going to look at a couple of colleges in Colorado and Utah, I believe. And so once again, we ended up in the San Juan's, and apparently our family is incapable of going anywhere without climbing or hiking something. So my dad suggested that we hike

Handy's Peak, which is a 14 or very, very close to Red Cloud and Sunshine Peak. And it is in American Basin, which American Basin is probably one of my favorite basins, just wilderness areas on earth. It's so beautiful. And all of the flowers were just in bloom by the creek. And we had just beautiful sunset, great Alpine Glow on the mountains of American Basin. And the next day, we woke up and we started our hike up pretty early, I think probably around 5.30-ish. And we made it to the summit by 817. So yeah, we probably started around 5 is my guess. It's very short and we brought our newly adopted dog with us for the first time. So we had Marley for two weeks before we did Handy's Peak and then we decided, all right, you're a part of the family now. It's time to climb your first 14er. So it was a

very, very easy trail. I believe it's five miles round trip. So a little steep once you get to the top, but you start out in a high tundra, I believe around 10, 11,000 feet-ish, and just beautiful wildflowers everywhere. And then once you get past this lake, then it turns a little rockier. And so you're walking on some rocks. And then once again, it kind of turns into this field that leads up to the final stretch up to the summit. I would highly recommend Handy's Peak as a first 14 or for anyone. I think it's super doable. You can totally take your time and break it up. And yeah, it was just, it was a really fun hike. I found a pair of Oakley sunglasses over by the lake. They were just sitting there and we asked people on the trail, hey, is this yours? And they weren't. So I got a nice

pair of Oakley sunglasses, but yeah, overall, so we ended up doing five 14ers in five days when I was 14, but, you know, at one point in time, I had done the four, the four 14ers in four days. But overall, it was just a super fun summer of hiking, and I think it really sparked my love for the activity even more, because definitely when I was younger, there were some 14ers I was kind of dragged up on. Not really, because a lot of of it is mental and if you don't want to do it, you're not going to do it. But I think this is the first somewhere where I really, really truly just enjoyed it and it wasn't as arduous and difficult as it had been in the past. So ever since then, I've been flipping through my Colorado 14ers book

looking for a new 14ers and I'll keep hiking them every summer. Ideally, I would love to do all of the Colorado 14ers one day, but I know there's some really technical ones, especially in the and Burnt Bells, which is pretty risky because the rock's crumbly over there. But we'll see. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll do all the 14ers in Colorado. Thank you so much for listening to Off the Trails on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I hope you have a great week and make time to go outside and enjoy the great outdoors. I'll see you out there. Happy trails. Bye guys.