Donna, Jake and I drove up toward Buena Vista leaving our house at 04:00. Since moving from Aurora to near Conifer the familiar "14er commuter route" up US-285 has had about an hour shaved off each way. We followed the directions (almost) from Roach's description, but instead of encountering Chaffee County 322 1.3 miles along 321, we ran into it maybe a quarter mile after turning onto 321 from 162. Confused, I turned onto this section of 322 and ran into private property with no apparent road to the Mount Princeton Trailhead. Thinking maybe the "no trespassing" sign referred to the surrounding landscape but the road was open for travel to the trailhead, I drove uphill on a dirt road to the right of a ranch gate. Sure enough, I hit another segment of 322 that led to the trailhead, so this is what I should have waited for.

We drove up the road toward the radio antenna array (10,820'), and drove a little farther to an area suitable for parking 4 or 5 vehicles (about 11,000'). High clearance 2WD would be adequate for this road, and I'm sure some passenger cars could make it to the trailhead. There aren't a lot of areas to park or pull over for other vehicles. Some climbers managed to park closer to treeline but the safest bet is to park at the radio towers. I pulled off the road and we got our gear together, and headed up the road at 07:00. Jake of course tore up the road ahead, and after a while I started pulling ahead of Donna. We hiked mostly separately as we did on Mount Massive, keeping in contact with 2-way radios.

The road switchbacks up the slope and then leaves the trees and heads to the south. The route follows a small trail up the hill from the road, which tops out on the ridge then traverses into the large basin below Princeton's East Face. The trail soon degrades from dirt to a crossing on reasonably stable medium-sized talus, as it heads toward Princeton's summit. At some point the route leaves the trail, which would eventually have led to a mine below Princeton's East Face, and climbs up to the connecting ridge between "Tigger Peak" (13,300') and Princeton. Once on the ridge you climb to the summit.

We had great weather - almost a little too hot. Nothing but a few small puffy clouds to the west and very little wind. There were a lot of climbers but most started after us and we did not encounter them until the descent. This climb also had a higher proportion of novice hikers than on most 14ers.

Led by Jake we left the traversing trail to gain the ridge early, on a trail marked with two large cairns and a small American flag. Other hikers continued on the main trail and took a different trail to the ridge just before the last pitch to the summit. Following the ridge toward the summit, often dropping below the ridgeline to skirt some high points, we came to the last steep grunt to the summit. After several hundred feet of vertical my altimeter read 13,880', and just 100' above me was a summit. I didn't see any people on it and thought it might just be a false summit, but my altimeter proved to be off and we topped out on the summit at 09:30.

There were a couple groups of friendly climbers lounging around in the sun, some of whom thought Jake was cute as he hit them up for food and water. I didn't bring enough water for both Jake and me, and we didn't find the usual streams and snowfields from which Jake would obtain his water. As a result Jake was a little thirsty at times, but a couple hikers kindly shared their water with him. I got a couple summit pictures and waited for Donna, who was around 1000' below me.

          
Fotos ©2001 by John C. Maki

More groups arrived, and I enjoyed conversations about neighboring peaks and other climbs with some of them. Climbers always seem to be the friendliest people I ever meet. After 45 minutes on top I noticed a strange "aura" in my field of vision. I could see a sparkly shape right at my focal point, which persisted in both eyes whether open or not. At first I thought I might have inadvertantly stared into the sun, but a very slight dizziness suggested otherwise. After reading Mark Vanderbrook's report of the same experience on Mount Edwards I knew this was either a sign of an oncoming migraine or an altitude-related symptom. I have never experienced a migraine or any altitude problems before, but perhaps this was brought on by an inadequate time for acclimation and a rapid (for me - 1300'/hr) ascent. I took a couple ibuprofen and drank some water, and waited five minutes to see if the aura went away. It didn't, and I radioed Donna that I was going to descend. After 300' of descent I ran into Donna, and the aura was disappearing, which was good considering it was blocking my view of the rocks directly in front of me. I went a little lower and sat down to wait for Donna to summit and descend. Donna's hips were bothering her from the talus traverse, and she was moving more slowly than usual. After a few minutes of resting and surveying the ridge, I decided to descend to the saddle and climb Tigger Peak if I felt up to it by the time I got down there. At 10:50 Donna radioed me to tell me she was on the summit.

My legs were feeling strong and the strange aura was gone, and despite having run out of water on the descent from the summit I felt great, so I decided to hit Tigger Peak. That didn't take very long, and I descended back to the connecting ridge where the short trail joined it with the lower trail, and waited for Donna. After 30 minutes or so Donna arrived, and we made our way back down the trail. I think it was around 14:00 when we reached the Jeep - if I had been climbing alone and left out Tigger Peak I probably could have done the round trip in 4 hours of hiking.

On the way home we stopped at Hog Heaven BBQ just east of Crow Hill - not bad. I've climbed a lot of my remaining Sawatch 14ers this year, and the next one should be Holy Cross next weekend. As a departure from the peak-bagging I'm planning to take this Wednesday off and try out the Evans/ Bierstadt East Ridge/Sawtooth 3rd class route. I'm excited to try this climb; I need a challenge after all these Sawatch rockpiles. Of course climbing Holy Cross in a day will be a challenge, but a different kind of challenge I'm sure I can manage.