How to Plan Your Colorado 14er of California 14er Hike, for New Climbers

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As I’ve been saying all through this series: 14ers, particularly in Colorado, are a day hike… well, until they’re not. If something goes wrong, you are separated from safety by miles and miles of rugged terrain, and that’s if you are ambulatory (can walk). If you need a rescue, you are many hours (typically about eight hours) from help arriving.

From 2010 through 2017, Colorado’s 14ers saw 57 fatalities. And as the popularity of the peaks is increasing, that number is only accelerating. 2017 saw 11 fatalities, including five deaths in six weeks on a single peak (Capitol Peak).

In other words, harkening back to some stuff I’ve written about risk, the probability of a problem is fairly low, but the consequences can be really high. So, we need to make sure that we are figuring out how to lower both the probability and the potential consequences, and good planning can help with that.

The California 14ers tend to be more involved, with backpacking and multi-day outings being more of the norm. You are more likely to need to be self-sufficient because help is a long time away. Just the nature of the peaks, themselves, demands that you have a good plan because it is certainly less possible that you just drive up to the trailhead and start walking.

The video walks through the “why’”s and “what-for’s” of planning for a 14er summit attempt, but it relies on a few free resources:

The most helpful in terms of resources and a community available to answer questions is 14ers.com. But if the upside is the incredible depth of information, the downside is that it is pretty much Colorado specific in its structure. That doesn’t mean that California 14ers aren’t represented, but you have to do more digging. In the “Trip Reports” section, you can search “all other peaks,” and find some good information, including some GPX files. The “Forum” is also searchable by “California 14ers,” and you will find additional information and discussions, there; although some of it is dated.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site is the resource I use for localized weather forecasts, and is usable for any peak in the United States. Just remember, you have to put in a town or city name in the weather search and then manually move the map to the peak if you aren’t automatically clicking to the forecast from the 14ers website.

I also mentioned CalTopo. Since the site can allow you to input any officially named geographical feature, you should be able to just input the name of any peak you want in order to get the site to move to a local map around that peak. As I mentioned, you can import GPX files, but you can also export files so that you can add to your GPS device any routes that you create.

For California specific information, I mentioned the California 14ers page on She Dreams of Alpine. This is far from the one-stop shop that the 14ers website is for Colorado, but it makes a great starting point.

Then, finally, there was the Falcon Guides book on the California 14ers, which is available for purchase as of September 1, 2021.

Use the resources. Do the planning. Not only can this help you get more enjoyment and less risk out of your 14er attempts, but it is also a perfect set of skills to be applied to other outdoor adventures. These planning techniques still form the basis of how I plan my trips, today, and not just the day hikes. I break a multi-day expedition down into single day chunks and apply the same planning techniques and thought processes. So, beyond this 14er and this hike, I hope you’ll find this approach to planning to be repeatable in a way that will benefit your entire climbing and hiking career, no matter how high or how far you end up going.