This morning I got out of bed, microwaved a frozen burrito, made a cup of coffee, took a quick shower, and headed out the door to begin the drive to my destination, Mount Sniktau.
Sniktau sits atop Loveland Pass and is one of Colorado’s 637 peaks that tower between 13,000 and 14,000 feet above sea level. That is a big mountain, even if Colorado’s 13ers are overshadowed by the state’s most massive peaks, the 14ers (one of which is appropriately called Mount Massive).
You can actually see two 14ers from the trail up Mount Sniktau. I got some views of the sun rising over Grey’s Peak and Torrey’s Peak on my way up to the top of Sniktau and reminisced about my ascension of those mountains back in 2019.
When I reached the cut-off at the saddle between Mount’s Sniktau and Cupid, the wind became a bit… unpleasant. It just got colder and colder as I climbed and I wound up not spending a ton of time on the peak of Mount Sniktau. Originally, my plan had been to continue on to Cupid Peak, but the wind suggested otherwise and I headed back to my car.
The Mount Sniktau trail is only about four miles round trip so I stopped in the little mining town of Silver Plume on the way home and did a four mile hike up to the Griffin Monument on the 7:30 Mine Trail. So that makes eight miles today and 46 miles hiked so far in January. I am well on my way to 100 miles for the month.
