Grays Peak

Over the past few weeks we've been trying to hike Grays and Torreys but haven't had much luck with the weather. Finally on Friday it said no rain and fairly warm so we decided to give it a shot. Needless to say, the weather was wrong.

We started out the hike in the drizzling rain but it wasn't too bad since we were layered up and the views were very pretty. The first mile or so follows a creek fairly to your left and you have mountains on all sides of you. Below is a picture from the trailhead.

As you continue to head uphill, the views stay fairly similar until you can finally see the peaks. The tops are covered in the picture below due to the clouds but it still looked pretty cool.

After your gradual uphill, which starts at 11,000 already, you then start to really head uphill. I'm not used to hiking above 12,000 a whole lot and I could definitely feel the lack of oxygen. As you start getting towards the top, it gets fairly rocky but the views of the meadow leading back to the trailhead were nice.

Unfortunately at about 13,000 our light drizzle turned into windy/snowy conditions. We both made it up to Grays but couldn't see more than 30 feet in front of us so we didn't end up going over to Torreys as well. We just hit the peak at around 14,278 and then took the saddle-back, which you can see below, then made our way down.

All-in-all we ended up going ~8 miles with a 3,600ish elevation gain. It was definitely a more tiring hike due to the altitude even though the distance wasn't very far. We'll have to head back with better weather and try to tackle both of them and actually get to enjoy the views.