Sherman Adventure

I hatched a plan while running Mosquito Pass the other day. The plan included running up the Mosquito Pass Road, then running the ridge including Mounts Evans, Dyer, and Gemini to the summit of Mt. Sherman. When I took to the maps with string and piece of paper to figure out the splits and itinerary it all looked very doable. The snow situation looked good as far as one could see from Mosquito Pass. All of the pieces seemed good and running most of the route seemed probable. And to some degree that was what I found.

The run started, well, a bit rocky. I admit that I had a couple of beers the night before so the run up Mosquito Pass Road was not easy. I was catching up on my hydration all the way to the ridge and needed to take several 30 second breaks to let my heart rate fall below redline.

Once upon the ridge the running looked promising. There was a little talus on the way up Evans and I was able to walk these sections at a rate that was probably comparable to running at that altitude. Upon reaching the summit of Evans I was able to see the route in entirety and from a distance the only holdup looked to be a semi-technical ridge between Evans and Dyer.

The ridge was, in fact, 3rd and some quasi-4th class scrambling. It ended up being the largest time suck on the route but it did add a little pizzazz to the run. I was able to test my speed-scrambling skills a little and they were good.

Due to the amount of time that I spent on the ridge and the continued technical scrambling that Dyer appear to entail I opted to skip summiting Dyer and run what appeared to be meadows to the east of Dyer, connecting to the ridge over to Gemini and Sherman. The meadows turned out to be talus which also ended up being a time suck.

Once I hit the ridge over to Gemini, it was pretty smooth sailing. There was a faint trail on the ridge which was fun running until I got to the steep swale on the side of Gemini. The running here would be good with only a little talus breaking the connection of the the trail between the flattest section of the ridge and the middle of the sandy swale. It would also be good if I had been stronger in running between 13,000' and 14,000'! But this is the reason why I wanted to do this run. The swale is runnable but I didn't run it on this trip.

From Gemini I was able to run the meadow over to the final 150' push up Sherman and was able to run on the summit of Sherman itself as it wasn't so steep. All in all I would say that this route was about 60% to 70% runnable. Not completely ideal.

The trip back was uneventful though I was definitely feeling worked. The weather threatened with lightning while I was on the technical ridge but cleared out for my descent down the Mosquito Pass Road. I am glad I skipped Dyer. That would have been a bit much and would have made the route maybe 50% to 60% runnable in all. 4:38, 14.0 miles, 4,000' climb.