Mount Yale

Mount Yale

Mount Yale rises to a height of 14,194 feet above Middle Cottonwood Creek, commanding a vast sweep of the central Sawatch Range. The hike begins on the trail to Browns Pass, then follows a well-beaten side trail to timberline and a steep, primitive route the remaining 2,000 vertical feet to the summit of Mount Yale. It can readily be completed in a single day by hard-core hikers who are acclimated to high altitudes, but less experienced hikers may want to camp below the timberline and attempt the summit as a shorter day. In either case, visitors bound for the summit should start out in the twilight hours in the morning so that the round trip to the summit can be completed before the afternoon thundershowers hit. Although an established trail runs almost all the way to the summit, the steep and primitive nature of the final pitches and the scrambling required to gain the summit give this hike some of the flavor of a mountaineering trek. Expect crowds on the weekends.

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