This past Sunday we decided to try and summit one of the prominent mountain features you see when gazing west towards the Indian Peaks: Sawtooth Mountain. At 12,304 ft Sawtooth Mountain isn’t the tallest mountain in the Indian Peaks, but it is one impressive looking mountain with its 600 ft tall steep cliff face, its pointy and narrowing summit, and its generally striking profile from the plains. It also happens to be the easternmost point of the Continental Divide in all of North America. More importantly, it is in an area we have yet to explore further, and the hike and climb – on paper – seemed like it would be a good fit for bringing Strelka.

The general route was to simply follow Buchanan Pass Trail up to Buchanan Pass and then climb the spine of the mountain up to the summit. For the most part it was no problem following the trail. We didn’t encounter snow until we started the climb to the pass in earnest, and at that point, we just hiked directly towards the lowest point of the pass. As the pass was coming into sight, though, I started worrying about how we would get Strelka over the cornice that we now could see extending across the entire pass. Jen didn’t seem quite as worried, and she was right. It definitely wasn’t easy getting Strelka up and over the cornice, but Strelka was a trooper and partly because of her being very obedient following all our commands and partly because she just naturally follows our path, we managed to get her through a couple of exposed and tricky spot and all the way up to the pass.

We were met with fierce winds once we got up onto the pass. The contrast from being just a couple of feet below the snow cornice to now standing on top of the pass was incredible. Holding on to hats, glasses and gloves we started making our way south up the spine of Sawtooth Mountain towards the summit. Strelka was a trooper, bracing the wind, and carefully placing her paws one at a time making her way towards the summit; well aware of the sharp, rocking, unpredictable rocks hiding just under snow, and whenever possible seeking out uncovered, preferably grassy, sections to avoid the unknown discomfort and danger hiding under the snow.

The weather had started building up all around us, and we knew that we might only have a small window for getting to the summit and back, so we hustled, and found ourselves relatively quickly on the summit after having passed one or two false summits. It was a special experience getting all the way out to the tip of mountain, feeling the narrowing and related exposure of the mountain from both sides as we got closer and closer to the summit. Strelka is not afraid of heights, and she likes to get close to edges to look down. Because of that, the exposure up on the summit, and the strong winds we decided to put her on a leash for the last bit – just to make sure she wouldn’t get too close to the edge and get blown over!

We were super happy to have reached our goal, and that Strelka had made it with us. We didn’t celebrate for long, though, seeing that weather still was rolling in both from the west and the north. Longs Peak was already getting engulfed in clouds and some form of precipitation, so we hightailed it down to Buchanan Pass at which we had scouted a new and different route for our descent which looked quite a bit easier than the way we had chosen on the way up. It was much easier, but it still had its fair share of exposure, but Strelka was moving fast and clearly motivated to get back to the car; back to a place for her to rest. We had already hiked about 8 miles or so and climbed 4000 ft, and while she was looking strong, she was clearly also getting tired. We still had another 7 miles or so back to the car, but it went fairly quick and what a joy it was to see Strelka’s excitement when we got back to it! I think she used her last bit of energy to wiggle her butt and do a little happy dance. Shortly thereafter she crashed hard in the car.

What a great day in the mountains!

Check out all of the photos here.