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Ski and I tried to bag Tabegauche in June, this was the third attempt on this mountain for Ski. We got our gear together on Saturday and drove to Salida then up CO road 240 along the North Fork of the Arkansas river. We camped at the North Fork Reservoir, above are some pics of the area. The panoramic shot is of the reservoir just as the sun is going over the mountains to the West. Just above is a shot of Aetna Mountain (a 13er) which is also on the left side of the panoramic shot. To the right is another shot across the half frozen lake and then a shot of Ski's new tent - we had enough room for a small family in there. Below is a shot of us having a few beers by the campfire. There was still alot of snow around the campsite as you can see from the tent pic, we were camping at about 12000ft. The snow came in handy though as we just threw our beers, gatorade and water in the snowbank to keep them cool. The next morning we drove back down the road toward the trail, parked on the side of the road and decided to bushwhack our way to the trail. Ski could not find his guide book, so we were going to rely on my GPS (maggie) on its inaugural voyage.
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The GPS proved to be very accurate, but my kowledge of how to use it was minimal, and later we were to discover a very important piece of information. The information on the map of the GPS is only as acurate as whatever you upload to it. The TOPO map that I uploaded with points of interest (like mountain peaks) proved to be a little off, and the location for tabegauche was actualy misplaced by quit a bit. The trail starts off in some pretty thick woods and then switchbacks up a rocky aspengrove and levels out a bit as it winds through some grassy spots and ponds. Then it gets very steep and goes up a sandy scree hill above treeline and up to a 13000ft plateau where you can begin to see the rest of the route. Above is a pic of some of the twisted, dead, bleached timber near treeline on the scree hill. To the left is a pic of Ski well over 13000ft, that may actually be Tabegauche in the background. Below is a shot looking east from the 13000ft plateau. The shot of both of us was taken somewhere in the middle of the acent still below treeline.
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Once we made it to the plateau we climed up a bit and just followed the ridgeline. We were doing good, but I knew that I didnt want to attempt Shavano so we took our time toward Tabegauche. When we made the saddle we thought we were supposed to go to the right (the pic to the right shows the route and Tabegauche peak in the distance) but the GPS map was telling us that the peak was to the left. So we hiked up the peak to the left even though it was not as hight as the one on the right. Without a guidebook or any other map we didnt have much else to go on, and when we got to the top we were over 14000ft. We assumed that the other peak which was slightly higher must have been Shavano. Finding no register and no top carin we were skeptical, but we went ahead and took pics and headed down. The pic to the right was as close as we got to the actual summit. The one below shows ski on the windy subpeak, and the other shows me with Antero in the background. We headed home and had dinner at Bennigans. We didnt realize that we had climbed the wrong peak until we looked at photos the next day.
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