Peak Bagging 14'ers: Grays & Torreys

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Suuuuper early 3:00AM start for Grays and Torreys, a hike that’ll get you two fourteeners in one swoop. Super early as in, when I left Breckenridge, people were leaving the bars. There were quite a number of cars in the parking lot when we arrived, but no one else was hiking yet except for one pair. We summited Grays first and we were #3 and #4. Our hike up was completely in the dark until about 30 minutes from the summit, and it was a quite chilly morning! We had prepared for some cold but we would have welcomed another layer and warmer gloves. There was a cloud inversion, combined with a light sunrise, which made for a beautiful view. We didn’t last up top long though because of the howling wind- and trying to shelter by a wall of rocks did us no good.

The trail leading down from Grays up to Torreys was somewhat scree-like. Scree are small loose stones, and when you hike down on scree, you may just get a little boost from the stones rolling down the mountain under your feet. Our time up on Torreys was also short lived because of the wind. But no more than 30 minutes on our way down from Torreys’ summit, the sun was shining and you would never have known an hour earlier that the wind was screeching in our ears and slicing across any exposed skin.

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