What is it this year? It’s almost the end of October and
there’s virtually no snow on the mountains yet? We can still hike the peaks of
the Front Range without needing snowshoes yet to get through big drifts left
behind by early storms, and it’s warm enough to make the climbs relatively
comfortably . Crazy!

Well, my new outdoor buddy Kelly and I decided to make the
best of it with a hike in what I consider more my neck of the woods than his
Northern Colorado, the Indian Peaks Wilderness above Boulder. Mount Audubon is
a peak I’ve climbed at least twice before, including once in winter on
snowshoes, and it’s one of my favorites because of its prominence and relative
ease. So why not introduce Kelly to its pleasures?

Mount Audubon is a “thirteener” with a summit of 13,223
feet. Thirteeners in much of the state tend to get passed over in favor of
bagging fourteeners, but Mount Audubon is a very popular hike because of its
proximity to Denver and Boulder. It’s also a very prominent peak, the big round
thing you directly in front of you on a clear day as you drive from Denver to
Boulder on U.S. 36. But on a weekday in late October, Kelly and I pretty much
had the mountain to ourselves.

You start the hike to Mount Audubon at Brainard Lake at
10,500 feet altitude, a National Forest Service fee area in summer that’s
within the Indian Peaks Wilderness and a ten mile drive up a good paved road
from Ward, a kind of crunchy/earthy hippie mountain town above Boulder . The
hike to Mount Audubon’s summit is about four miles each way and not particularly
steep by Colorado standards with an altitude gain of about 2,700 feet. And you
notice the difference in the amount of oxygen in the air between a 13,200 foot
peak and one that’s 14,200 feet as well.

Easy is a relative word and any climb of 2,700 feet in
Colorado is quite strenuous by the standards of normal mortals. But the
conditions were close to ideal with cloudless skies, strong winds only near the
peak, and stellar temperatures for late October. As “Kellythons” go, this wasn’t
a particularly hard one, but I was the one who suggested the route after all. Of
course, we had to finish up our day with beers and burgers at Mountain Sun
Brewpub in Boulder when we got back down the mountain.