Saturday I headed down to the very southwest corner of Jefferson County to hike up Buffalo Peak (11,589 ft). I had mapped this hike out as being about 10 miles, half of which was on a trail and the other half brushcrashing through open country along the western ridge to the summit and down a rather steep southeast facing slope back to the trailhead.

The hike along the first 4.25 miles along the trail was relatively easy since it was on a well defined trail that followed along a mountain stream and up a slowly climbing valley. At this point I headed up another, much less defined trail, that climbed at a much greater rate to a saddle and the start of the cross country brushcrash. Atop the saddle I headed east and started through the relatively open forest of pine and spruce with little ground cover. No problem with this route is that I could not see the final destination for much of the ridge, so I could only track my progress by the waypoints that I had already programmed into my GPS. There was some snow on the ground which made progress a little slower, and parts of the ridge I had to scramble up and over some rocky outcroppings. Plus I'd gain some elevation only to lose it, and then gain elevation only to lose it again. I have about 4 such ups and downs before I actually gained Buffalo Peak's true summit. It took my 4 hours and 25 minutes to get from the trailhead to the summit. At 11,589 feet, Buffalo Peak is the highest point in Jefferson Co. The summit is just above tree line, and from the summit there were nice views all around. I found the summit register, and discovered that I was the first person to sign it this year.

Initially I was planning on heading down the southeast slopes of Buffalo Peak to a saddle and then hike up a smaller peak called "The Wigmam" which is 9870 feet high. However the southeast slope was more difficult than I had hoped, I ran out of water and I was quite worn out so I got to the saddle and headed directly down to the trail I had started on. From the time I started the hike until I finished was was out for 7 hours, and I figured I covered more like 15 miles and the 10 that I had originally mapped due to having to zig zag back and forth while off trail. This was probably one of the most difficult hikes I have done, and if I was do it again, I'd wait a little later in the season to avoid the snow, make sure I had more water, and have at least one other person with me for I quickly realized that if anything had gone wrong no one was going to find me out there, especially since Buffalo Peak doesn't have that many people hike it.

That evening I was going to join up with Rich and Kelly for dinner, however being as dehydrated as I was, my legs were cramping up, I was feeling a bit nauseous and really wore out so I called them up to say I wasn't going to make it to dinner but hoped to meet up with them later since we planned on hiking up Twin Sisters Peak in RMNP on Sunday.

After showering, swigging down copious amounts of fluids, trying to get some sleep, I felt better and then drove up to their place to spend the night since they live much closer to RMNP than I do and would allow us to get a reasonably early start.