Mount Democrat
I went on a club trip to climb two fourteeners, Democrat and Lincoln. Early in the morning we climbed steeply about one thousand feet from Kite Lake to a saddle between Mount Democrat to the west and the eastern route over Mount Cameron to Mount Lincoln. As was the plan, we first climbed another thousand feet to the top of 14,186 foot Democrat. From there we could see the mountain ranges all around us including the Mosquito Range, the Sawatch Range, and the Gore Range. To the east, we could see the route to Mount Lincoln. There were some dark clouds to our west, and we decided to reevaluate the rest of our trip after the descent back to the saddle. Once we got to the saddle, there were dark clouds around us and we decided to return to the trailhead and end our trip. It was still a very nice climb.
There is a third fourteener, Mount Bross near Mount Lincoln. Currently, Mount Bross is closed to climbers but there is work to open it again. It will be nice to come back in the future and follow a circuit route over Lincoln and Bross.
