![]() The image that ultimately proved most evocative was this telephoto view of Snowmass Mountain and Capitol Peak, two of the Fourteeners in the Maroon Bells-Snowmass Wilderness some thirty miles to the west. When dawn finally arrived, I reluctantly stepped out of my windbreak and tried to compose a shot that would capture the 100-mile view in every direction. ![]() ![]() Elbert, then hunkered down behind a sheltering rock to escape the unrelenting wind and wait for dawn. I shot a few photos of the Milky Way looking south along the summit ridge toward Mt. Another third of a mile of ridge-walking and easy scrambling over some big boulders, and I was on the summit feeling thoroughly exhausted and sleep-deprived. The cabin’s walls, floor, ceiling, and doors are fully insulated, and then the cabin exterior is then covered in clear anodized aluminum at. I continued to plod upward in the cold, strengthening wind and finally reached the summit ridge. Mount Massive Details Cabin The cabin frame is constructed with welded structural aircraft aluminum for an extremely tough, durable, and lightweight cabin. The prominent 14,428-foot (4,398 m) fourteener of the Sawatch Range is located in the Mount Massive Wilderness of San Isabel National Forest, 10.6 miles (17.1 km) west-southwest (bearing 247°) of the City of Leadville in Lake. My GPS receiver, loaded with a route downloaded from, helped guide me back to the summer trail when it emerged from the snow. Mount Massive is the second highest summit of the Rocky Mountains of North America and the U.S. Anticipating that diurnal cycle, I had come prepared with ice ax and crampons, which I needed as soon as the summer trail disappeared under the snow. By midday those snowfields would soften in the sun’s warmth, making it easy to kick steps, but at midnight they were frozen as hard as a rock. It was June and large snowfields still draped even the sun-soaked southwest flanks of the peak. Once again I hoped to summit early enough to shoot a few Milky Way photos before the sky grew too bright to see the stars clearly. I checked out of my hotel in Leadville, drove to the trailhead, and pitched a tent for a restless nap before hitting the trail at 10 p.m. After examining my options, I decided on a one-day blitz on the southwest flank route. Massive is a huge slog,” legendary ski-mountaineer Lou Dawson told me once. Massive are made more arduous by the relatively low elevation of the trailheads and the long summit ridge. Massive is the second highest of the Colorado Fourteeners, only twelve feet lower than nearby Mt.
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