I took Dallin and Brennan up Quandary Peak, 14,265′, one of the Colorado Fourteeners (14’ers) just a few minutes South of Breckenridge. Dallin, 11, has already been up, and he asked a few days ago if we could go again, since it’s so “fun”. Brennan, 8, asked if he could go, then waffled, then finally settled on going.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtLwUBW8mFE

A special treat on Quandary is the likelihood of seeing mountain goats. This time we were blessed to see two baby mountain goats shedding their winter coats. They were walking near the trail and came straight at us. We stopped and quietly waited to see what they would do. One came down the trail to within 10′ of us and stared us down, then ambled over to the edge of the steep South Face and turned its back on us. The other one soon joined it, as shown in the video above.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWfXOItcTz0

I planned on rest stops about every 45 minutes, which got us up to about 12,800′, and from there I stopped about every 500′ of vertical for them to sit and rest. I kept them hydrated and fueled and at 3:01 from the time we left the car we hit the summit, as shown in the video above.

We hung out for about 20 minutes, chatting with other people there, took some pics of the smoky view (also in the video above) and the gorgeous view down into the Northwest gulch with lakes, one of which was frozen. If you look carefully in the pictures below you can see an orange and a green tent by the lakes.

We made it back to the car in a little over two hours, then went to Breckenridge to Wasabi Grill for chicken and rice lunch with the girls, who were skating all morning.

KPICASA_GALLERY(QuandaryPeakWithTheBoys)