Mt. Princeton 2026

This was to be our third and final big hiking day of our 2026 trip to Colorado. Originally I had been planning to take two of my sons, Luke and Seth up Grizzly Peak as a new peak for all 3 of us and it looked like a fun climb. However, 2 days prior we had a very big day on Holy Cross doing the Halo Ridge and my son Luke decided he was good for the trip and didn't want the extra hiking day. This left my son Seth and I to either tackle the new peak (Grizzly) or an opportunity for Seth to hike a peak his brother had already done. We went with the latter option and that led us to Mt. Princeton. My oldest Luke and my 2nd Jonah did Princeton back in 2017 and Seth wasn't along that day. This would be the perfect hike, especially as we were staying close to Buena Vista, for us to tackle.

Trip Info:
Mt. Princeton East slopes standard route

Trailhead Elevation: 10,976 ft.
Distance: 7.84 mi. 
Elevation Gain: 3,181 ft.
Start Time: 6:24am
End Time: 11:16am

Trip Report:
The real adventure on Princeton, for good or for bad (mostly bad), is the drive up the road to the radio towers. It is not a technically difficult road. Mostly dirt with some small rock obstacles and several water bars requiring decent clearance. A couple of the switchbacks briefly get your attention to navigate difficulty. The main obstacle was a section halfway up the 3 miles that some recently refer to as the "egg carton". A series of rather large holes requiring some navigating and clearance. The true challenge of the road is its narrow nature and the absence of places to pass for the majority of the road. We spent our drive up just hoping and praying not to encounter anybody. Most of the road is a shelf road with almost no passage. Some of the switchbacks might offer places to encounter oncoming but otherwise you just pray everyone is heading up in the morning and down in the afternoon.

We drove up to the radio towers and then perhaps another 2/10 of a mile beyond and then parked off the side of the road. Beyond our location there are precious few places to park. The road really doesn't get more difficult though so one could adventure further at their own risk. We had a nice start at 6:18am and made our way up the remaining 1.4 miles of road.

Hazy views

We had some concern about the air quality with the wildfires going on. Our drive in from Trout Creek Pass showed a high amount of haze in the Arkansas River Valley. Princeton itself sat in the haze from our view. However, when on the mountain itself we did not notice or smell any smoke and other than some haze in the views we were fine.

Walking up the road, the trail junction is the pile of rocks on the right

While you hike up the road, it is worth noting, you don't actually walk to the roads end. It continues on up to some Princeton Cabin. You're going to be looking for the large cairn and rock step trail that breaks suddenly off to the right.

A closer look at the trail junction

Once on the trail you get a lovely, but brief, section of single track dirt that curls up on the slopes of Princeton with Tigger and ultimately Princeton coming into view. From here you see most of the remaining route. This beautiful part of trail is only about 0.4 of a mile long and you'll love it as everything beyond here is one big pile of rocks.

Looking ahead at the remaining dirt trail before the pile of rocks begins

The trail within the rocks is fairly easy to follow thankfully. We had spent a large amount of time route-finding on Holy Cross's Halo Ridge ridge two days prior and so it was a mental relief today to just follow what was ahead of us.

Following the "trail" in the rocks

As you make progress you can look ahead and almost always see the route in the rocks ahead. This is both good and bad. We got caught in the bad. We could see the route wrapping around the slopes and then what appeared to be switchbacks up a slope to the summit ridge. This was not far from the final ascent to the summit. But what we were seeing was likely an older route. Because we saw it out ahead of us we felt comfortable continuing our traversing route in the rocks and it led to us missing a left turn.

The missed turn was entirely our fault. I hadn't looked at the route description ahead of time to know to look for it. There was a few small cairns and even a bit of a rock wall at that junction. But we missed it. We could see enough of a rock trail ahead still to lead us on.

We around 12,700 in elevation on the slope at the time. We were probably 0.15 of a mile past the missed junction. When I noticed it on my GPS app I decided for us to just start climbing up the slope to regain the track. This involved some light scrambling in relatively steep talus. Not technically difficult just a little exhausting. We did this for awhile until we finally regained what appeared to be the route. Distance-wise we may have actually shortened things overall but effort-wise it wasn't worth it. In hindsight we could have just gone forward on our traverse and followed what was the old route. We could have also backtracked. But it all turned out well.

In our "off-route" area trying to ascend

At the primary saddle looking ahead to the summit push

On the summit push

The final 900 feet of ascent from the main saddle is a pick your own route kind of adventure. There is nothing technical in here. There are sections of steep dirt and scree. There are lots of small and sometime stable rocks to use. The trail braids all over the place so there is hardly a single route. Somewhere along the way we encounted the memorial plaque for the woman who lost her life in a lightning storm.

In this section we met a descending party of four guys who were the first individuals we encountered all day. We were surprised how quiet the mountain was and how few were on route today. We summited at 9am making for a 2:36 ascent time. The views were beautiful off the summit even with some of the haze from the wildfires. We were able to enjoy about 20 minutes on top with no one else. A rare 14er summit to ourselves.

Almost to the summit

On the summit looking south to Antero

On the summit looking north to Yale

Looking back down the east slopes route

On the descent making our way along the ridge

On the descent we made an effort to keep along the summit ridge longer to stay on route. We found the descent to the "grassy switchbacks" to descend this time. We gave some thought to head over and summit Tigger, but we decided for today we just wanted to get down to rejoin the family for the rest of the day.

Back to the beautiful grass and dirt tree for the walk out.

Track:
I have a track and waypoints from the activity all contained in the embedded Google Map. Check it out and use at your own risk.