MT. OKLAHOMA
13,845 ft.
September 19, 2003
By Tim Briese
I left home at 5 a.m. with my lab Jorie and picked up Steve in Castle Rock before heading up I-70 into the mountains. Steve and I had never climbed together before and I looked forward to this opportunity. He, like myself, had previously climbed all the 14ers in the state. He seemed to have a bit more adventurous blood in his veins than I, though, for he had done three of the four great 14er ridge traverses as well as other exploits that I have not cared to tackle. I hoped I wouldn’t slow him down.
It was a gorgeous September day, without a cloud in the deep blue sky, and yellow aspens gleamed in the early morning sunlight as we drove up the Halfmoon Creek Road southwest of Leadville to the North Halfmoon Creek Trailhead. There were two other parties at the trailhead preparing to embark. A few minutes after eight we struck off up the fine North Halfmoon Creek Trail into the Mt. Massive Wilderness Area. A dog belonging to one of the other hiking parties initially joined us in the early minutes of the hike. I thought he would surely turn back soon to rejoin his owners at the trailhead, but he showed a surprising lack of devotion to them and displayed no inclination to return, so I verbally commanded him to do so after we had gone a few hundred yards up the trail. Had I not done so he might have joined us for the day!
Presently we overtook two older men hiking up the trail who asked if we knew where the turnoff for Mt. Massive’s southwest slopes route was. I had descended that route from Massive with Brian a couple of years before, when we hiked the long ridge from North Massive to South Massive, so I told them to look for a cairn along the trail in a meadow some distance ahead. When we reached the meadow I saw the cairn and turned to point it out to the men, who were by then some distance behind. I certainly did not envy them, because that steep route to Massive gains some 2800 feet of elevation in less than a mile!
From the meadow we were afforded a nice view of Mt. Oklahoma across the valley to the northwest, about a mile and a half away. We continued up the trail nearly a mile to treeline at 11,800 feet to a point where Oklahoma was directly across the valley to the west. At this point we left the trail and bushwhacked across the North Halfmoon Creek drainage toward Oklahoma’s south slopes. We found it necessary to descend about a hundred feet to cross the drainage and decided it would have been more expedient to leave the main trail about a quarter of a mile sooner. We skirted to the south around cliffs on Oklahoma’s eastern flank and ascended a steep grassy slope to a more gentle upper drainage at 12,300 feet. We hiked up the grassy drainage a quarter of a mile to the west to a broad flat area at 12,700 feet.
From this point we turned to the right and headed north up a steep slope covered with loose scree and talus to gain the crest of Oklahoma’s east ridge at 13,200 feet. This steep grind was more loose and tedious than it looked from below and was the crux of the route. Steve’s legs unfortunately began to cramp up while climbing this slope, the first time he had ever encountered this problem. We stopped a few times for him to recover, and he proceeded gamely on.
When we reached the crest of the broad ridge we headed to the northwest along its rounded crest and made a relatively easy scamper up grass and then talus about 400 yards to the summit.
We reached the top about ten minutes before noon, and were greeted by a chilly northwest wind that induced us to don warmer gear. The temperature was a brisk 34 degrees, but the cold didn’t deter us from enjoying the fine views from this lofty vantage point on the crest of the Continental Divide. Recent snow lying on north-facing slopes enhanced the beauty of the surrounding mountains. Visibility was unlimited, and we could easily see all the way to the Elks and the distant San Juans. The incredible three-mile long ridge of Mt. Massive directly across the valley to the east was quite an impressive sight. I noted in the register that Oklahoma had seen only about thirty visitors all year.
After a half hour on top we left and began our descent. We rapidly went down the ridge and paused a moment to admire a lake far below in the basin to the south. After a quick descent down the scree slope we hiked back to timberline and selected a more southerly route to go back across the North Halfmoon Creek drainage. It was fun bushwhacking down through the woods and across the creek, selecting a path of least resistance. After crossing the creek we contoured southeasterly across a slope and rejoined the main trail at about 11,400 feet.
We continued down the trail in the pleasant golden afternoon sunshine. We stopped for a break and rested on a large flat rock along the trail, the same spot where I had rested on my Mt. Massive climb in 2001. At 2:45 we returned to the trailhead and headed for home. We hiked about seven miles and climbed 3500 feet of elevation gain on this rather easy and enjoyable climb.
