After setting up camp, we hiked up the trail along the southwest ridge of Democrat to look for the route we would take the next morning. Lake Emma sits at 12,600 ft below Democrat's and between it's southwest and southeast ridges. It is an absolutely stunning site. We realized that if we had brought water and food, we easily could have reached the Democrat summit then. Considering that we weren't familiar with the rest of the route, we decided to wait until morning.

I woke up and decided to visit the nearby outhouse around 2:00am. The sky was perfectly clear, and the moon had set. I have never seen so many stars. It was breathtaking.

We got up around 4:30 and at 5:00, we saw a group of 5 hikers heading up the trail we planned to take. We hit the trail at 5:40am. At a split in the trail, we went right where the evening before we had gone left. The right fork took us to another set of lakes and gave us a view of potential routes. Here we caught up with two members of the group ahead of us. We pointed out our planned route to them and they headed off, while Scott and I stopped for a short break. The sun was just beginning to peak over Brass, so I decided it was safe to lose the thermals, talk about extreme exposure!

The trial is faint and at times hard to find, but we picked it up just on the north side of the lake. Just below the lower part of the extremely steep southeast ridge, we caught up with the other group. This part was a minimum Class 3, with the occasional class 4 pitch. We rested about 45 minutes and let other group finish to avoid any falling rocks. Scott was climbing a narrow 12 ft chimney by using footholds on its sides. It was narrow enough to catch his backpack. He was able to find good holds and climb a more stable route towards the outside edges of the chimney. When we reached the upper part of the ridge, the other group was still there. One of them was pretty shaken up about the climb. She was crying and saying she could not go any higher. Her friends tried to comfort her, as did Scott and I, by saying she had already gone through the worst part, but she was to shaken. Two of them decided to traverse to the southeast class 2 trail to return with her to Kite Lake. The other two hiked with Scott and I.

We scrambled up the ridge and then crossed a large talus field, passing some old mines, to Democrat's summit. We reached the summit around 8:30 and spent about 30 minutes shooting video and taking pictures. We talked to a group of three guys that were smoking weed at the summit, (They were using a magnifying glass to light their pipe) they were kind enough to offer us some, but we respectfully declined. I had a faint headache all morning. By the time we reached the summit, it was a full grown headache. It was also on Democrat's summit that Scott realized he forgot his food, all I had was two granola bars and a Cliff bar.

We started off for Cameron. The Class 2 trail to Cameron is fairly steep and not well defined at first, after about fifty yards of scrabbling the trail appears. Approaching Cameron's summit, I decided that I might head on down from there. I told Scott that because of my headache and our lack of food, that perhaps we should head back down after Cameron. He agreed. When we got to the top of Cameron and saw Lincoln's distinct peak, Scott changed his mind. He said we had come that close and we might as well grab Lincoln while we were there. We decided to summit Lincoln and save Bross for another time.

The trail to Lincoln was pretty easy and the last fifty feet is somewhat exposed. We spent about 15 minutes taking pictures on Lincoln's summit before starting back down. Since we thought we were done for the day we stopped, so that Scott could light up a cigarette . This allowed two lovely young ladies, that left Lincoln a few minutes after us, to catch up with us. Their names were Susan and Karen. (Please forgive me if I misspelled your names.) We were talking with them while hiking down Lincoln, forgetting that we had decided to skip Bross....... At Bross's summit we sat rested with two guys who were nice enough to offer us food. They had also just completed the cirque and were going to descend Bross and head over to summit Quandary.

Susan, Karen, Scott and I began our descent down Bross. The scree field down Bross is pretty loose and deep. I think I finally got the hang of scree and had a blast "skating" down Bross. Susan and I had great conversation along the trail descending Bross. Karen on the other hand was flying down the scree feild, leaving Scott and Us in the dust. We reached camp right about 2pm, so it took us around 8 hours to complete the cirque. While Scott gave Susan and Karen a ride to their car, I sat down and realized that my head was really pounding and I was starving.

We tore down camp and drove to Salida where we had a huge meal at our favorite restaurant, The Country Bounty, they are one of the few restraunts in town that take in dirty, smelly hikers. We then decided to head to the hotel and take a 12 hour nap.

-Shayne Seymour