Mt. Princeton

May 23, 2020 / 14,197’

RT STATS: TOTAL TIME - 9 HR & 26 MIN, 14.15 MILES, AND 5,219’ ELEVATION GAIN

TIME STATS: 4 HR & 30 MIN TO Princeton, 46 MIN AT SUMMIT, 4 HR & 10 MIN BACK TO CAR

RATING (HOW MUCH I LIKED THE HIKE): 7/10

Yay, first hike and first 14er this year!! I arrived to Colorado Springs on Thursday 5/21, moved into my apartment on Friday 5/22, and hiked this 14er on Saturday 5/23. Essentially, I went from sea level to 14,197’ in about 3 days…crazy! Aerobically, I felt great as I have been running and doing strength training consistently for about the past 5 months.

My dad and I left Colorado Springs around 4:30 am that morning. Along the way, we saw the sunrise and it was gorgeous as always. The only other interesting part of the ride was eating my greek yogurt with a fork. I didn’t have a clean spoon when I left that morning, so I grabbed a fork and ate my yogurt like a twit. Also, notice the greek yogurt and how it looks inflated because of going up in altitude…haha

We arrived to the ~8,900’ trailhead at around 6:50 am. This is the trailhead where you park if you do not plan on going up the 4WD road. It turns out we made a great decision (more on this later!). We began the hike a couple minutes before 7 am. The first few thousand feet of elevation gain and miles of the hike is essentially just hiking up this 4WD road. About 20 minutes in, we saw some cars going in reverse down this narrow road and we were wondering what was up. Well, we hike a little bit further and a large passenger transit van was stuck, blocking the road to the road to the upper trailhead! I didn't take a picture though because yeah…. I totally understand and know that it is common for more skilled drivers to take non 4WD vehicles up these roads, but, honestly, you should be fairly certain about your driving skills on these roads.

We keep hiking a bit and finally see some snow! Not snow that we had to hike on though. The views are spectacular as usual. The mountain I have pictured below is not Mt. Princeton… it is Tigger Peak.

At about 11,800’, we finally arrive to the Mt. Princeton trail. So about 3,000’ in is when this hike feels more like a 14er…at least to me. The very beginning of this trail is very steep, then it levels out to a nice dirt trail for a bit.

From approximately ~12,000’ until the summit, the trail is basically all talus. Between 12,000’ and 13,000’, the trail is talus filled, but it is pretty clear where the common trail from the cairns. During this time, we cross some snowfields.

We get to the 13,000’ ridge at just under 3 hours. My dad took some stunning pictures of myself with Princeton in the background ;) And the classic Kristin snapchat selfie but I haven’t been on Snapchat since January, so this is its first appearance in awhile haha.

For the next ~1,200’ until we reach the summit, the path is talus galore. I want to rename Mt. Princeton to be Mt. Talus. Seriously, there were some mini trail-looking segments, but, for the most part, you decide where to go...makes it much more fun than something like Grays and Torreys!! Frankly, I used this section to really work on route finding.

It took 4.5 hours to reach the summit. I stayed up there for about 45 minutes. The views were incredible! A few groups of people took pictures with the classic sign that I make for each peak, so that was cool :). I tried the chunky peanut butter flavor of the think! protein bars at the summit and it was tasty! Totally dissed this bar in one of my posts last year, but I have grown to like them. Gotta get some protein in so I keep the gainzzz.

Eventually, we started our descent of Mt. Princeton! I took out my hiking poles to use on the descent. I let my dad go ahead and sniped quite an artsy picture of him. I was relieved once we got back to around 12,000’ and we were out of the talus. I need to break in hiking boots because I don’t wanna be almost twisting my ankle 20 times again haha.

The hike back down from ~11,800’ to the trailhead was pretty simple and straightforward. The van was not stuck in the road anymore…woo hoo!!!!! We finished the hike in a total of 9 hours and 26 minutes. I ate another one of those think! peanut butter bars (disclaimer not all of the food I ate on the hike were these bars lol)…La Casa Sanchez is always the place to go for Mexican food in Buena Vista (Mt. Princeton is super close to Buena Vista)! I ordered my favorite meal ever—chicken fajitas—and, as typical, I joined the Clean Plate Club ;)…see the photo evidence (tortillas not pictured). I like Mexican food if you can’t tell. It never gets old….I could live off of it.

Overall, I am ecstatic to be back in the mountains! This is probably one of my least favorite 14ers honestly because of all of the talus. I probably won’t do this 14er again for awhile :), but, as always, I love hiking all of these mountains so who knows! I realllyyyyyyy need to break in some hiking boots because my running shoes are just getting so destroyed. *Hikes 27th 14er, but still wears running shoes* <-That’s meeee!