Loretta McEllhiney was shelling peas within the yard of her Leadville house, surrounded by a lush, overflowing backyard, once we spoke. Summer time storm clouds have been gathering over Mount Large behind us — a mountain, I’d quickly be taught, that was her favourite fourteener out of all 56 within the state.
“It’s appropriately named,” she informed GearJunkie with a wry smile. “It’s a large mountain.”
McEllhiney would know. She spent extra time wandering the slopes of Colorado’s 14,000+ foot peaks than most likely another residing human, previous or current. She is answerable for the standardized trails all of us observe to their summits. Not solely was she the impetus behind the state’s initiative to construct these trails, however she was additionally the one who scouted, scoped, mapped out, and designed virtually all of them foot by foot, peak by peak.
“After I began this, I had no thought what I used to be doing,” she informed me earnestly. “We had requirements, however truthfully, our requirements have been for regular climbing trails — not for mountaineering trails.”
So she needed to be taught, and even create new requirements for the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) as she went. She consulted with many consultants and was all the time a part of a staff shifting towards a shared objective. However, McElhinney is credited with main the cost for many of her 33-year profession working for the USFS.
She spent numerous nights on fourteener slopes and roughly 100 days a yr climbing them, exploring the alpine surroundings, and in search of out one of the best routes for public trails to the tops of every one.
She retired late in August 2024. I met her at her Leadville house every week into her retired life to speak about these trails — her legacy because the USFS supervisor of the Colorado Fourteeners Program — and what it took to construct them.
Queen of the Fourteeners: Loretta McEllhiney
McEllhiney mentioned she had loads of unhealthy days engaged on fourteeners. She witnessed and responded to aircraft and helicopter crashes on Mount Large. She’s been caught in violent summer time lightning storms. Many days have been simply tedious workout routines in path design, measuring slope angles, taking notes, and mapping for hours on finish, protecting many miles in 100-foot sections.
However the reward was well worth the effort. McEllhiney was doing this to guard a number of the state’s most delicate and weak ecosystems. With out standardized routes, individuals have been climbing straight up the alpine slopes, creating gullies and social trails. When it rained, these grew to become channels washing away the soil — and that was a large downside.
“Within the alpine, soil builds at about one inch per 1,000 years,” McEllhiney informed me. “That’s robust to lose. It received’t get well any time quickly.”
When McEllhiney joined the USFS in 1991, solely two fourteeners had standardized trails: the Barr Path on Pike’s Peak and the Keyhole Route up Longs Peak. That left 52 14,000+ foot peaks that have been being torn asunder by armies of hikers route-finding, climbing like ants throughout these lofty peaks. (At the moment, because of newer geologic surveys, the overall variety of fourteeners in Colorado has risen to 56.)
Each soil and vegetation have been being misplaced en masse. And because the alpine surroundings suffered, so too did all the creatures that lived there. Pika, marmots, mountain goats, large horn sheep, and plenty of different alpine animals have been below severe risk.
“We realized, ‘That is unhealthy,’” she mentioned. “We needed to do one thing … If we didn’t get on it and begin addressing it, we have been going to have larger issues.”
A Artistic, Scientific Course of
Time was working out for Colorado’s alpine ecosystems. So McEllhiney threw herself on the process of defending them — and that meant designing trails for each single one.
When she began describing her course of, it grew to become clear she wasn’t simply mapping the simplest path to the highest and calling it a day. This was an advanced venture, equal elements scientific and inventive. And McEllhiney was the maestro on the market sculpting what would grow to be her legacy. She described it in an virtually mystical manner.
“A number of the mountains actually talked to me,” she mentioned. “A number of the different mountains, they needed to kill me.”
The 4 Phases of Fourteener Path Design
McEllhiney broke the venture’s course of up into 4 phases: Challenge Initiation, Exploration, Evaluation, and Design.
Challenge initiation concerned plenty of planning — speaking with counties, maps, and compiling information. Exploration was her favourite section. That was when she spent her days scouting the slopes, usually tenting on them, listening to the mountains, studying them, and imagining the place their trails may go.
“I’d principally scour the mountain for optimistic and unfavorable management factors,” she mentioned. Optimistic management factors could possibly be good aspect slopes with secure soil or snowfields individuals may glissade down. Different positives have been purely sensory, although, like a view or a bodily expertise.
“Perhaps you’re strolling alongside below a ridgeline, and there’s a spot, and the wind almost takes you off your ft,” McEllhiney mentioned. “That’s a optimistic management to me. It makes you notice, ‘Oh, I’m in nature.’”
Unfavourable management factors may embody scree fields, bogs, waterways, animal dens, different hypersensitive ecosystem areas, or harmful terrain.
Evaluation was about connecting these dots. If she and her staff may keep away from all the negatives and join all the positives, that they had a profitable path.
The fourth and remaining section was “design,” and it was essentially the most tedious for McEllhiney. “Very, very, very tedious,” she mentioned, a touch of PTSD creeping into her voice.
She described it as taking foot-by-foot building and restoration notes.
“I’m dragging a 100-foot tape, staking each 100 ft, taking slope angles — ahead slope, left and proper, upslope, downslope — for each a kind of sections, after which writing precisely what will be inbuilt that 100-foot part. Hundreds of hours of simply pulling a tape, strolling backwards and forwards.”
A State Legacy, a Proper of Passage, a PSA
McEllhiney spent a long time repeating that four-phase course of, on one peak after one other, throughout Colorado’s Rockies. The top end result was one of the crucial necessary outside leisure path networks in Colorado.
Roughly 260,000 hikers climbed this state’s fourteeners simply in 2023. And that’s the lowest recorded quantity because the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative began monitoring that information in 2014. They’ve grow to be a lifelong goal — for locals and guests alike. Even in all her humility, McEllhiney acknowledged that these symbolize a Colorado proper of passage.
And so they’re sacred to her like they’re sacred to so many others. Regardless of a number of the horrible issues she noticed throughout emergencies on Mount Large, that’s the place she acquired married, she informed me. Simply above treeline, she and her husband hiked up with a buddy, their witness, and became their wedding ceremony garments.
She confirmed me an image — it was taken not removed from the path she’d designed a few years prior.
With out her, there’s no telling what sort of state the alpine environments on Colorado’s highest peaks would appear like immediately. However it’s secure to say it might be a lot worse off if it hadn’t been for her.
“I don’t suppose that we ever did this with the mindset to carry extra individuals. We did it to make it higher for the useful resource, to attempt to confine individuals to narrower corridors, and depart all the things else in order that nature may dominate,” she mentioned.
McEllhiney is a conservationist by means of and thru. She has a deep ardour for these mountains. It was her profession’s work to guard them. Now it’s as much as the remainder of us to do our half — and it’s fairly straightforward to do.
“The extra that folks can keep on the paths, the higher,” she mentioned. “The alpine is a really restricted useful resource in Colorado, and we have to defend it.”
