Mt. Audubon- it's COLD in the mountains!

I recently climbed Mt. Audubon, which is a a "13er" at about 13,200 ft above sea level. In fact, Colorado has so many mountains HIGHER than this one, it's tough to claim some sort of moral victory from climbing it. However, it does offer an excellent view and a moderate difficulty trail (moderate when compared to 14ers, fairly strenuous for a normal hike). It's ONLY 4 miles long, how bad could that be?

Well, let's find out shall we? Keep in mind, I did this hike in September. It was 39 degrees when I started out around 11,000 feet. (yes, the trailhead is really high)

That's the top! Much further away then it looks.

Yes, that's snow coming down, rather fast. The clouds eliminated the possibility of any good "views"

This is me at the summit, cold, wet, tired. But still smiling (kind of)! This little 4 mile hike took me over 2 hours to summit. Of course, the "rock scramble" at the end was at least 35 minutes of that!
Let it snow! This was about 2 hours of accumulation. The phrase "winter wonderland" crossed my mind.

Look familiar? This is the same hillside as portrayed in the first picture, with snow on it. I was so happy to get down to this point- it's only about a half mile to the car from here.