Belford, Oxford, Missouri,
The start to our 2017 14’er season didn’t come easy for us. A busy winter season of working multiple jobs in Aspen kept us from leaving any sooner than April 15th. We decided to start the trip off with a triple-header, Missouri Mountain, Mt. Belford and Mt. Oxford.
It was dark by the time we turned south and drove past Leadville on towards Twin Lakes. From there we turned onto Chaffee County rd 390 towards Vicksburg, a ghost town made of a few old disintegrating miner cabins. We hit snow about 1/4 mile from the trail head for Missouri Gulch pulled over and called it a night.
The next morning we realized we were missing a few supplies and needed to charge some crucial equipment so we decided to head the town of Buena Vista. We would do an afternoon approach with a high camp at the bottom of the drainage near tree line. We went into town and did our business and then headed backtracked towards our mountains. We left the trailhead around four pm, walking for about a 1/2 mile before putting our skis on. By dark we had found a nice little tent spot nestled in the trees to protect us from the soon to ferocious wind.
We were hoping to get all three peaks in one day so we set our alarms for four am. When we woke up, we poked our heads out of the tent to freezing temperatures and rock hard snow. We were assured that it was too cold for the snow to start warming up anytime soon so we went back to sleep with the snooze on. Cuddling with our dog Bowie inside our two sleeping bags zipped together. Heaven.
We did this for another hour or two and then around 6am started to shuffle around in our sleeping bags. Coffee and oats in bed, and then eventually out and dressed. By 7:30 we were on our way up the Missouri drainage, headed toward the Northwest Gulch of Mt. Belford. The skinning was great. Hard snow but you could still get an edge in. The snow up high on the West face’s looked bleak. The wind really does a number on some of these peaks.
Around 12,500 ft we transitioned to crampons. The last 15000 feet of climbing the winds started. Gusts up to 20+MPH tested our balance in the steep gulch. Bowie seemed to be the most affected by them, finally slowing down to a pace closer to ours. We reached the ridge where the gusts kept at us. At the top of the mountain we quickly put our layers on and then found a little cave for protection a few feet lower. We took some pics drank some tea and then transitioned for our first of three descents that day.
There was just enough snow to get a summit descent this day. I had to do one weird little rock ollie to get to the first apron of snow. After that it was smooth sailing. The snow had warmed up just enough to be pleasant.
From the bottom of The basin we transitioned into our crampons as the snow was still hard enough to make for an easy climb to the ridge connecting Belford and Oxford. We easily made our way up and then back down Mt. Oxford.
We slogged our way up the connecting ridge and by the time we got back up Mt. Belford it was late in the day. We deiced the smart move was to spend another night and go for Missouri Mountain the next day. We took an amazing corn snow run down the West face of Mt. Belford. A great mellow line, something you could take your back-country mom on and you would all have fun.
The next day we went for Missouri Mountain. Check your sources on this approach because we went off of only one picture for the summit. When we had got to our presumed summit we looked past the ridge at something a few 100 ft taller than us. We checked our GPS and sure enough we were about 400 feet to low in elevation. We were on the far northwest ridge. We traversed the ridge and made our way to the summit by noon.
The ride down was an aesthetic line with some very scary chalky, and variable snow. Sometimes some ice, others zipper crust. I was sad to see this summit decent go down in such crappy snow conditions. It is defiantly on the list to go back to for in good snow some day. Tons of rad lines on this North / Northeast face.
