Bighorn is supposed to be a good place to see sheep, and I had climbed it back in September with our friend Aaron and his buddy Lucas in hopes of viewing sheep mating or some other awesome behavior. The elk rut had us all excited to see some Marty Stouffer style ram action. We hiked about 3 miles up the Lawn Lake Trail, before bushwhacking east up the mountain. It was a relatively straightforward hike, but we didn't see any sheep mating nor did we see any sheep at all. Perhaps it would have helped if it was actually mating season...
Laura and I had attempted the same route in mid-March, but the snowshoeing proved too difficult once we left the trail, and we gave up after a little while. This time I decided we should climb straight up the steep cliff-filled south slopes of the mountain, since they would have little snow.
While steep, it was a perfectly good route, and we reached the top of the first major cliff about an hour after we started. We had a great view to the south of Horseshoe Park, Trail Ridge Road, and Longs Peak:
We had come down a similar way back in September when it was much less dry in the valley:
We continued up the ridge, and some fun scrambling opportunities soon arose.
The climb alternated between rocky cliffs and hiking through the woods until we reached treeline. After some more unnecessary scrambling, we passed a false summit and finally got this view of our objective, the 11,463 foot summit:
It was an easy tundra climb now, and we quickly made our way to the top.
Again no sheep, but I was surprised to see another group of hikers! Apparently they had come via the other route, as there was little snow anywhere on the mountain.
We ate lunch at the summit with the impressive Mummy Mountain in the background. After the wind began to pick up, we retraced our route back to the Lawn Lake trailhead, and returned back to the low country of Boulder.
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