A week after our first 14er, we decided that we wanted to not only hit another one, but do a combo, and go for 2 in one day. Grays and Torreys are in the Front Range, and pretty accessible as long as you’ve got a high-clearance (preferably 4WD) vehicle, which luckily, we now do!

We headed up there super early again, this time just Erika and I. It turned out that we really needed the truck, because the road was super rutted out, with big deep holes in it, and a small creek crossing at one point. If you couldn’t make it up that road, it’d add a few miles to your trip. We picked up a few folks on the way up who had already parked their 2WD and were walking the rest of the way. Once at the trailhead, we had a quick bathroom break and then got moving as quickly as we could.

For some reason, getting up Grays (the first one) felt quite a lot harder than Bierstadt had, only a week earlier. I haven’t looked at the elevation profile, but maybe it’s significantly steeper or something. It definitely took it out of us, and we had to take pretty frequent breaks. There are a bunch of depressing switch-backs as you get towards the top, so it feels like you’re making very little progress, even though you can barely breathe. Once we got to the top though, we pretty quickly decided to go for Torreys (it was a beautiful day, with no sign of bad weather).

From the top of Grays, you descend down into the saddle, then straight across to Torreys. The peak of Torreys actually requires an even steeper (straight up) ascent, which is pretty slippery/scrambly in places. By the time we got to the top, it was getting pretty crowded so we had a quick snack and made our way back down.

According to timestamps on photos, I think our total round-trip time was about 6.5 hours (6:15 am to 1pm).