Mt. Antero - Summer 1997

 Note: this trip report was written from memory on February 16th, 2004.
This was my first fourteener. My Dad, sister and I decided to go on a summer road trip. But, rather than drive across the country, we decided to explore our homestate of Colorado. We visited Mesa Verde, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Telluride, and Mt. Antero.
I was fifteen, and was learning to drive on my permit. The Baldwin Gulch roas was my first experience off roading. Fortunately, the road was quite mild on the lower sections. Darkness fell and we slowly bumped up the road. This is when we coined the term "Bronco-Neck-Syndrome" (After the Taco Bell Ad popular at the time in which people had hurt their necks bending to eat tacos), as his Bronco II had very worn suspension, and bounced around a lot.
We setup camp in the darkness and rain at about 10,500. The next morning we continued up the road, until it began to switchback steeply above timberline at about 12,000'. After stalling the car around the first of the steep swtichbacks, I learned for the first time that the brakes don't work very well when the car is off and you're rolling backwards. We decided not to continue in the car, and parked. We began to walk, and decided to cut the switchbacks and head up a gully. After quite a bit of scrambling, we reached the road again near 13,000 feet.
After walking along the road for a while, we reached the steeper flanks of Antero. Even though the clouds were moving in, we headed along the steep ridgeline to the cloud covered summit. Initially on the summit, we could see some to the east, but the clouds quickly moved in, and we were lost in the fog. After a little while on the summit we headed down.
It was not spectacular, or even very impressive. We hiked with no backpacks, map or other gear, and had not entirely planned on making the summit. Never the less, it was my first fourteener summit. I will have to go back to get a more official summit, with more vertical ground covered on foot.