Mt. Sherman – 14,036

After work was done for the day, I had a few hours to kill so thought I’d tackle another 14er — the 2nd in two days. Mt. Sherman was less than an hours drive away, so off I went…

After driving about 10 miles on a long dirt road, you start to go up an old mining hill. I parked about 11,500, well below the gate at 12,000, but it seemed like a good chance to get a nice downhill road run in for training for the Ridge To Bridge marathon in October. I quickly started climbing the hill and the reached the gate, and then continued up eventually coming upon several abandoned mining buildings.

This is looking back down the valley and the road I had just climbed..

The valley from just a little higher:

The last little ridge line is a bit sketchy… This was at 13,800′, and I really started thinking that 13,800 was good enough… This was about 4′ of solid ground in the middle, but both sides of that were scree — and 500′ drops (or more?) to your death. The picture really doesn’t do it justice to how precarious it looked! I’m not normally affected by heights, but this one was giving me a slight sense of vertigo..

Another shot a bit further up. I basically looked down at my feet and started moving. I was ready to turn back, but eventually made it up without any difficulty.