Mount Columbia (Colorado)


Mount Columbia is a high mountain summit of the Collegiate Peaks in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The fourteener is located in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness of San Isabel National Forest, northwest by west of the Town of Buena Vista in Chaffee County, Colorado, United States. The mountain was named in honor of Columbia University in the City of New York and in commemoration of its rowing victory at the renowned Henley Royal Regatta in 1878.

Mountain

Along with nearby Mount Harvard, Mount Yale, Mount Princeton, and Mount Oxford, Mount Columbia is one of five Collegiate Peaks named for prominent universities. Due to a notoriously challenging scree field located on the standard route, Mount Columbia is usually only climbed by those wishing to climb all of Colorado's fourteeners. The forest service recommends that hikers take the user-created Horn Fork Basin Route, an 11-mile roundtrip that gains 5,800 feet in elevation. The area near the scree field is severely eroded, and although there are efforts to build a new trail to replace the current user-created trail, the formal trail has not yet been completed.