The road to the Sherman trailhead is the Four Mile Creek Access Road, 1 mile south of Fairplay on 285. The dirt road was surprisingly well-plowed for about 8.5 miles, where the road maintenance abruptly ended in a 5-foot snow barrier the plows had created. Since the road isn't too steep, we donned skies and skins and headed in towards the trailhead. That was about 7:30 in the morning...the skies were mostly cloudly, a few flakes of snow flying. It appeared that a small storm system had pretty much parked itself over Mts. Sherman and Sheridan. We figured it would clear up as the day matured....wrong!

The road was pretty easy to follow even with the snowpack. The old mining site of Leavick was about 1.5 miles up the road. The farther west we progressed, the more the snow and wind picked up. As we continued on towards the conventional summer trailhead below the Dauntless Mine, the road/trail steepened somewhat, so we switched out the skis for snowshoes, added another layer of clothes against the wind, and continued on.

By the time we reached the Dauntless Mine (about 10:30), the winds were swirling and howling around us...one second blowing a gale, the next eerily calm. Snow was falling moderately but steadily. Visibility at this point had reduced to probably a few hundred yards. Since both Chris and I have climbed Sherman via this route before, we had a pretty good idea about where to head, so we picked our way around the lower mining complex and up to about 13,100', where a few more lonley mining ruins mark a windswept ridge. It was now just past noon.

Conditions on the mountain were deteriorating rapidly. The wind was blowing consistently in excess of 40mph, and the snow was coming in sideways...that hard, stinging kind of snow. Visibility was reduced to several feet. After a prolonged rest on the leeward side of one of the old mining buildings, we decided that it was probably unwise to continue. Even though we knew the route, and the avalanche danger on these gentle slopes was fairly low, the weather and visibility pretty much clinched it. Swapping our snowshoes out for the skis, we cautiously skied down our ascent route. The descent was a bit touch-and-go, since the weather conditions took away all our depth perception. Luckily, we made it down past the lower mining complex and back to the road with little problem.

The ski out turned out to be quite a slog. Enough snow had fallen during the day that our tracks from the morning were almost gone, and the new snow was thick and wet. We finally made it back to the truck right at 2pm. And wouldn't you know it, right as we started packing our gear, the storm broke above us and the sun came out! So we missed the summit, but it was still a good experience as far as I'm concerned!