Conquering Mt. Elbert- Colorado's Highest Mountain

In the summer of 2007, my friend Zule from Sarawak and I climbed Mount Elbert located in the heart of the Rocky mountain range. Standing at 14440 ft (4401m) tall, Mount Elbert has many accolades to it: highest mountain in Colorado, highest mountain in the Rocky Mountain range and the second highest mountain in continental United States. It is also the highest mountain that I have ever climbed so far, my previous high mountain attempt which ended in failure to summit was Kinabalu (4095m). I got sick half way to the top at Laban Rata bcoz I was drenched in rain a day earlier.....how embarrassing, even old folks thrice my age could make it to the top but I couldn't ;(

Anyway, we left Golden early in the morning, 3am, for the pleasant mountain town of Leadville which is about 2 hours away. We ate some bananas for breakfast and set off for the climb as soon as we could because we wanted to summit by noon. Clouds are expected to set in right after noon and that means strong winds and bad weather.

On the way up.....steep slopes.

Panoramic view of the land below.

The trail is well kept and clearly marked, so its quite impossible to get lost. However, the slopes are REALLY steep and it was killing my knees! As we got closer to the summit, the wind blew stronger and could even sweep you off your feet if you are not careful balancing on those cliffs. After, 4 hours of toiling we finally reached the summit of Mount Elbert. It was breathtaking up there as there weren't any clouds to hinder the vista.

Flying the "Jalur Gemilang" on the very top of the Rockies.

As always.....living on the edge.

We took 4 solid hours for the journey up, but made it down in half the time. We were really relieved to be down before the bad weather set in. Thank god that we were blessed with good weather all the way!

Expressing how happy I am after the hike ;)

Had to do some "Bollywood" shots given the Bollywood like scenery ;P