After rafting the Colorado River in Glenwood Canyon, I drove down and had dinner in Leadville, follwed by a short drive to Mt. Princeton. The road up Princeton is really narrow, but in excellent shape. A regular car could make it all the way to the radio towers easily. I made it to 11,000 and figured I should stop before I trivialize the climb. The switchbacks on the road had nice pullouts for a single car, so I stopped at the first one and set up camp. A group of four people passed me on foot, looking to set up camp somewhere above. Later, a single vehicle passed and made camp at the switchback above me.

Got up without my alarm at about 5:15 and made breakfast. This was my first solo ascent since getting my MP3 player, so I brought it with me for a little distraction. I was on the trail by 6:08. The MP3 player worked great! I wasn't really paying attention to fatigue or soreness or anything like that. I found that I kept a good slow steady pace and went a long ways without ever stopping for a breather. This is in sharp contrast to my usual hiking style, wherein I hike faster than I should and have to stop frequently for air. I made it all the way up the road to the trailhead, then around the ridge to where the talus begins before I stopped.

Once on the talus, the trail contours around under the ridge for a long ways, heading towards a mine. Roach indicates that the trail doesn't reach the ridge and just ends at the mine, so I had it in mind to get to the closest approach to the ridge and then bushwack straight up to gain the ridgeline. I was still a long ways from this point when I saw the four campers I had seen the previous night up above the trail making their way through the talus off trail. I told them what I was going to do and mentioned that their route didn't look like much fun. They agreed that it was miserable trying to navigate the large boulders. They had made a terrible choice in navigation. I'm not sure what happened to them, but they never summitted. I guess they just got worn out trying to reach the ridge.

The ironic thing was that there was actually a really nice cairned trail that led from the mine trail to the ridge. Ascending to the ridge was trivial, and the mine trail leading to this point was largely flat. This left only 1,000' of vertical to go, on a reasonable trail up the ridge. I was really making excellent time, over 1,000' of gain per hour. I thought I was the first one to get up to the summit, but as I reached the final 700' push to the summit I saw two people coming down that I hadn't seen before. Turned out they were camping above where I had camped, and had started at 4:30 (before sunrise). So they had a bit of an advantage.

I got to the summit at 9:30, having spent about 20 minutes talking to the pair coming down. I maintained my average of 1,000' of gain per hour which made me happy. I felt very good and was very happy with my pace. I attribute at least a large portion of my performance on this trip to having some distraction music. I spent quite awhile on the summit and no one caught up to me while I was there.

On the way down I started seeing the droves coming up. Probably passed about 20 people on my way down. Never did find the campers who made the bad route choice earlier, or the three guys who had parked at the switchback above me. I got back to my truck at noon and had a quick bite to eat before packing up and heading home. I got lucky and didn't have to pass anyone on the way down the road (there was scarce room for that).