DAWSON'S GUIDE TO COLORADO'S FOURTEENERS, VOLUME 1

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The Northern Peaks

Volume 1 of Dawson's Guide to Colorado's Fourteeners covers the 14,000 foot peaks in north and central Colorado. Ranges covered are the Sawatch, Mosquito, and Elk. The volume includes 31 full- page topographic maps: the most crisp and easy-to-read of any fourteener guide yet published. Illustration also includes dozens of photographs showing the routes, with notes and route-lines. The volume is 255 pages, including a complete index, directory of phone numbers, peak lists, and other useful appendices. If you hike, ski, climb, or simply want to learn about Colorado's highest peaks, this is the only guidebook you'll ever need for the northern mountains (see Volume 2 for the southern peaks).

Foreword to Dawson's Guide, Vol. 1

by Jonathan Waterman

When I first met Lou Dawson in May 1978, he was recovering from a spiral leg fracture that gimped him sure as an old man. Although such trauma would have jailed most mountaineers at home, he spent spring and summer guiding in his beloved Colorado Rockies. His natural affinity for suffering, moreover his bull-dog endurance, saw him stiff leggedly racing (and beating) his fittest students over high passes. I left to climb Mount Logan in Canada.

Several years later, in February after I'd climbed Denali, his mother phoned Alaska to tell me that an avalanche had broken both of Lou's legs quite badly this time, again in the Colorado mountains. Doctors and friends figured that Lou would be hardpressed, physically and psychologically, to perform as a mountaineer. But that Thanksgiving, Lou proved them wrong. He hobbled to the top of Mount Elbert -- Colorado's highest alp -- bivouacked, then skied to its base at dawn.

He seemed changed after that. He didn't stop mountaineering, but he gave potential avalanche zones wider berths, carried a radio, and volunteered for Mountain Rescue. People who weren't serious mountaineers thought he was still cheeky as ever, but his closest friends knew he had become somewhat of a "Fox of the fourteeners—" determined not only to avoid accidents, but to learn everything he could about the mountains he called home. At the same time, he initiated his most ambitious project: skiing all 54 of Colorado's highest peaks.

It wasn't until the fall of 1989 that I figured out what Lou was really doing. And it was no coincidence that I was trying to climb in Nepal. My trip was somewhat of a personal failure, because I had hoped to solo a big peak and I spent a lot of money traveling halfway around the globe only to realize that my partner in mountain rime had the answer all along.

Sure, Lou had been climbing in South America, Canada and Alaska. But he had found his Denali's, his Mount Logans and his Himalaya in the backyard. While I sought mountaineering self-actualization in far ranges, Lou arrived upon Shangri-La in Colorado.

While slouching out of Nepal, I was determined to follow Lou's lead. His brand of backyard mountaineering can be as raw as the arctic extremes of Alaska, and with the exception of extreme high altitude, the fourteeners offer similar technical challenges, scenic backpacking, gentle picnicking, or the ski descents to be expected from any great range in the world. It's also cheaper.

As for the veracity of the guidebook itself, Lou did his field testing—fastidiously checking his odometer, obsessively tapping on his lap-tap computer and incessantly exposing film—as he finished skiing all the fourteeners in the spring of 1991. This was an unprecedented feat. Now, while I am attempt to grovel up the fourteeners in winter, face plant down them in the spring, or sweat up them in the summer, my success is owed to Lou's inspiration, his companionship, and this book. Lacking the actual "Fox," Colorado's Fourteeners is Dawson in a box.