Access to 14er Mount Lindsey open again after years of closure

Last February I wrote about my failed attempt at summiting southern Colorado’s Mount Lindsey during the summer of 2021, the 14er defeating my out of shape mid-pandemic new-dad body in ways I had never before experienced.

It was a brutal self-assessment opportunity for me at the time. I was on the cusp of turning 40 years old, we’d just had our first daughter that January, and the year-plus of isolation and being sedentary had rendered me significantly less able than I’d ever been before in my life. It was a much needed reckoning, one that began to set in even before I turned heel and headed back before even attempting the Class 3 climb up Lindsey’s northwest ridge.

Since then, Lindsey has seen its elevation revised upwards from 14,042 feet to 14,055 feet courtesy of a US Geological Survey update. The summit also had its access completely cut off, the Trinchera Blanca Ranch (owned by billionare Louis Bacon) having restricted it in the wake of a potentially precedent-setting lawsuit filed elsewhere in the state – one where a person was injured on a trail through privately owned land and successfully sued for $7 million in damages.

It was impossible for me to take that closure as anything other than personal. That mountain had been better than me that day. Despite my best efforts to use that as fuel to get myself back in the shape needed to summit the peak, the peak was now shut off to me altogether, and no workout, no training could grant me the chance at redemption.

Lucky for me, that finally changed last week.

As Haylee May of CPR.org noted, Mount Lindsey is once again open to hikers through an online permitting process, the standard route now available to traverse through the otherwise restricted, private land.

Jason Blevins of the Colorado Sun added that the re-opening was due in large part to a 2024 legislative adjustment to the Colorado Recreational Use Statute, one that reduced the burden on landowners who allow access on private land to inform recreators of dangerous and changing conditions. Thanks to that change and years-long efforts by the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative to help craft both signage and a waiver system, the Trinchera Blanca Ranch finally reached a point where the fear of liability no longer outweighed their willingness to allow peak-baggers to attempt to reach the top of Mount Lindsey.

Any individual who wishes to attempt to climg Mount Lindsey now needs to sign an online waiver, and that can be done at mountlindseywaiver.com. I’d also suggest that any individual wishing to climb Mount Lindsey get off their butts and get back in good shape before attempting it, something I’ve got on my schedule for later this summer.

Lindsey, an absolute jewel of a mountain on the Blanca Massif in the southern Sangre de Cristo Range, is officially back on the Redemption List.