I am not going to sugarcoat it at all. The Mount Antero (#278 and #288 Jeep Road) 4WD road is pure hell. We drive a Ram Rebel with air lift, descent control, and all kinds of bells and whistles and this drive up and down was AWFUL.

We research the 14ers before we go. We read about them including recent trail reports, watch YouTube videos of the drives (when 4WD), read hikers’ recent posts, etc. Nothing prepared us for this drive. 

We had read how awful the drive up Mount Princeton was and had read that Mount Antero was rough, but it did not sound as challenging as it was. We knew we could make it up to about 12,000’ before the narrow switchbacks started and so that was our plan. We headed out the door at 2:30AM, expecting 30 minutes to the 2WD trailhead and maybe another 30-45 mins to the final parking spot. It was 4:00AM before we finally parked at about 11,800’ after speaking to a hunter who said his Jeep had trouble a few yards up with highsiding. We figured we are only about 200’ from the original parking spot – no big deal. Um, YEAH, big deal. Little did we know the trek up that 200’+ elevation was very steep, loose dirt and gravel. What a way to start our climb!

We shiver as we don our headlamps and start up the 4WD road. Within a minute, we are both out of breath and complaining out loud how difficult the hike is. I am secretly wishing Joe just calls it. But he doesn’t. We slowly trudge up the road, noticing quickly how much colder it is this morning than the last few days.

We continue up the 4WD road, exchanging our frustration with each other that the truck could have made the drive even further than we expected (to about 13,000’). The road continues to switchback up the mountain and we see no other hikers or cars. After about an hour, the hunter passes us on the road in his jeep. He decided to give the road another try and made it up the rough section this time. Good for him.

The temperature becomes considerably colder and the wind picks up. I had checked the weather but had not looked super closely at the temperature or wind gusts as I was mostly concerned about moisture. This was a lesson for me – the temperature and wind gusts are just as important!  I only had my thin gloves and a thin long-sleeve shirt with me – I left my thick gloves and Spyder puffy jacket at the AirBNB (I had not used either in quite a while and decided I didn’t want to carry the extra weight). Don’t make that mistake!

Eventually the wind gets so bad that I feel like my hands are going to fall off. Seriously. We huddle down to try to get a break from the wind and I pray I have hand warmers in my pack. I don’t want to call it but I am in so much pain from my Raynauds. I dig in my pack and I find one pack of hand warmers that are at least 10+ years old. PLEASE let these warm up! We shake, shake, shake them and shove them down in my glove liners. I can feel a little, teeny bit of warmth emitting. YES! I will take anything at this point – even if it is just my imagination. As I blow warm arm into my gloves and shake my hands trying to keep the warmers working, my fingers slowly begin to thaw and that is when the pain sets in the most. I try my best to not yelp out loud but it is so painful. I can feel my toes are also quite cold, but thank goodness they are nothing like my fingers. I decide that staying crouched down on the road is not going to get us to the summit any faster and so we start our trek once again. 

We finally round a bend where there is a flat area for parking at about 13,000’. The wind hits us and literally throws us across the path. We are still on the road in the dark for another 700’ of elevation gain at least, but the sun is finally peaking over the mountains. Yes! UV’s!! If I can just warm up a tiny bit…

Finally, we reach the top of the 4WD road. The sun is up enough that we can see that the rock is white. We can also see the top of Mount Antero and the trek ahead of us to the top. Looks like quite a bit of scrambling around a ridgeline (in the wind) and straight up the side of the peak to the summit. But we got this!

We fight the wind, negotiating the rocks, climbing and hopping through what seems like a nasty obstacle course until we reach the final pitch. Here we can either climb straight up the ridgeline, fighting the wind to the top, or scale the side of the mountain through a series of rough switchbacks though loose talus. We chose the loose talus. Once at the peak we see that we are STILL the only people anywhere! There is no one but us on the summit and it is surprisingly not that windy! We are still super cold and my fingers are not even close to being thawed out and so we take a few pictures and start our descent. Thankfully by now it is about 7:00AM and so the sun is up. That whole ascent only took 3 hours but seemed like an eternity.

We work our way down the mountain, still fighting the wind and eventually reach the 4WD road. We see that the water on the road is still frozen solid. Yep. I could have told you that! At about 8:45AM we run into two hikers making their way up the winding road. One is summitting his 30^th 14er and also celebrating his 70^thbirthday. NICE!!!

The truck comes into view 5.5 hours after we started the hike. We both wanted to call it off several times, but neither of us was willing to say it out loud. Honestly, the hike itself was not really THAT hard. It was the elements and other factors that made this one of the worst 14er experiences. But that is how you have to look at it – it was an experience. The drive up was absolutely nerve-wrecking, the hike started out awful, the cold and wind were miserable. But in the end, we were the only people on that summit, saw a beautiful sunrise and we conquered it.

I did look back at the weather when we were done and saw that the wind gusts were supposedly 20mph (felt like 50!) and the temp was 30 and index felt like 14. Yes, I would agree with the 14 degrees!

If you have a good, high clearance vehicle, enjoy 4-wheeling or want to take an ATV up to the 12,000 – 13,000’ mark, go for it because the actual hike is not too hard. Just check the weather first.

7.5 miles
2500’ elevation gain
14,271’ summit
5.5 hours roundtrip
West Slopes Route
Class 2