We had another long drive to get clear around a mountain range and to the Sawatch range. This is home to Colorado's highest peaks. It was dark by the time we got close but I could see fresh snow on the summits. Uh Oh. We made our way to the trailhead to cook dinner (haunted by a fox that wanted to help us eat) and sleep.
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August 18. I sort of wanted to get a super early start to beat the forecast afternoon storm, but sort of wanted to start later to let some of the snow melt off. Earlyish won out. There was a pretty hard frost overnight but we were still hiking before 6:30. Nalumon was sitting this one out and Raquel set the pace so we passed everyone and worked up a good sweat before we cleared treeline. We continued up briskly but did slow a little near the top where there was a bit of snow but not really enough to impede progress (under an inch and soft and melting). We summited the 14,433 foot highest peak in Colorado by 9:30 and after the usual pics, food, videos, internet posting etc. we headed back down. There were a lot of hikers heading up as we went down.
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We stopped at a nice spot with sun, views, and cell reception just before treeline around 12,000 ft for Sam and Raquel to work a bit. On the rest of the descent we were playing around with using the trekking poles to turn steps down into forward momentum. It tired out your arms and greatly boosted your speed - sometimes frighteningly so. The first thunder was at noon and the rain caught us on the descent about half an hour later. We trudged back to the vehicles a little wet and took shelter.
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Summary of August 18th, one 14er, about 9 miles, 4,700 feet of elevation gain to Colorado's highest peak, snow, thunder, and rain.