MT. BELFORD AND MT. OXFORD

JULY 13, 2019 / 14,197’ (BELFORD) & 14,153’ (OXFORD)

rt stats: TOTAL TIME - 6 HR & 58 MIN, 10.82 MILES, AND 5,665’ ELEVATION GAIN

TIME STATS: 2 HR & 32 MIN TO BELFORD, 14 MIN AT BELFORD SUMMIT, 55 MIN TO OXFORD, 32 MIN AT OXFORD SUMMIT, 53 MIN TO BELFORD, 1 HR & 49 MIN BACK TO TRAILHEAD

RATING (HOW MUCH I LIKED THE HIKE): 8/10

Mount Belford and Mount Oxford were my 3rd and 4th Colorado 14ers this summer. I chose these two 14ers because it appeared to be a challenging 14er combo- 5,800 ft. elevation gain and 11 miles round trip. It appears that 3:30am is that usual time to leave for these 14er hikes so far. I set an alarm for 3am but woke up at 2:45am!! Anyways, we headed off to the Missouri Gulch trailhead. The drive went by pretty quickly and we arrived at the trailhead at 6:20am. The parking lot was nearly full (though, it’s not that big of a lot), so we parked in one of the last spots (or at least, I made a spot for my car haha).

We set off on the trail just after 6:30am. The first mile was just many switchbacks going uphill below treeline, but the trail soon became flat for a bit (praise). Between the 1 and 1.5 mile mark, we encountered avalanche damage. The damage looked significant; however, the trail was almost completely cleared of the damage, so it was not an issue. As with our hiking style thus far this summer, we basically do not take long breaks so we continued on.

We finally took out our hiking poles at around 1 hour 15 minutes as this was the point where the hike was starting to get noticeably steeper. From this point onwards until Mt. Belford’s summit, we only took a few mini (30 second-1 minute) breaks, so, thus, we were making great time. We made it to the top of Mt. Belford in 2 hours and 32 minutes. The elevation gain to the top of Mt. Belford from the Missouri Gulch trailhead is about 4,300’. We took a quick 14 minute break before starting on our trek over to Mt. Oxford.

The path over to Mt. Oxford involves a 700 ft. descent and then a 700 ft. ascent. I was surprised that the majority of people we saw at the top of Mt. Belford were not going over to Mt. Oxford. Yes, Mt. Belford gains around 4,300’ , but what is another 1,400 ft. elevation gain to go over and get Mt. Oxford?!? It took 55 minutes to get over to Mt. Oxford. Nothing really noteworthy to talk about regarding the trek over to Mt. Oxford. We spent 32 minutes at the summit of Mt. Oxford. I ate a ton of my trail mix and also had a think! Brownie protein bar because I thought that I should get some protein in (it contains 20 grams of protein). I ate ¾ of the bar and didn’t feel like finishing it, because it sucked. 0/10…would not recommend. I have 5 of these bars back at my apartment if anyone wants one, so hmu!!! 

The trek back to Mt. Belford took about the same time as the trek over – 53 minutes. I definitely was starting to get tired on the way back up to Mt. Belford. Like, 700 ft. does not seem like much to gain, but it felt hard. Back at the top of Mt. Belford, I see on my watch that our total time is 5 hours and 6 minutes. I say to Dennis “Let’s complete this whole hike in under 7 hours”. I don’t know why I said this, but #sub7cluboxfordandbelford, am I right? We didn’t stop at the top of Mt. Belford except to adjust our poles for less than a minute. Somewhere on the way down between Mt. Belford’s summit and about 12,000 ft. elevation, I lost my neon blue Camelbak water bottle. My first thought when I noticed this was “Oh no, I unintentionally littered on the trail :(”. In all seriousness, I am sad to have littered 120% by accident. My second thought was “Why could it not have been my ugly gray Camelbak?”. I carry (I guess I should say had carried now, lol)  2 32 oz. Camelbak water bottles hiking and a couple 16 oz. plastic water bottles and I like the neon blue water bottle more because it is pretty.

After this point of noticing the missing water bottle, our pace increases slightly since the steepest part of the trail was the second half of the elevation gain. Sometime during the last 30 minutes, I lost the stopper thing on my trekking pole. This really will only be an issue in snow, so I will need to figure out what to do in the future. I kept looking at my watch the last 10 minutes and knew that we would be cutting it close (ahhhh dramatic….it was not dramatic, I am joking). We officially made it back to the trailhead 6 hours and 58 minutes after we started (thus, our descent from Mt. Belford was 1 hour and 52 minutes). We had no service for the whole unpaved road leading to the Missouri Gulch trailhead. We soon got service on our way back to Buena Vista. Since I was driving, Dennis went on Yelp to find a restaurant. We went to a place called House Rock Kitchen. I got a Southwestern house bowl, which was pretty good, but expensive for the portion size. I got easily have eaten 3 of these house bowls, but that would be paying like $55 for something I can make for like a fourth of the price. After this, we just headed back to Colorado Springs. Fun day.