Mount Rosa - Colorado - Mountain Summits on Waymarking.com

Mount Rosa was named for Rose Kingsley, a Colorado Springs aristocrat who is credited with establishing the city’s first library. An avid hiker, she is also believed to be the first woman to climb the mountain named after her. Its distinctive pyramid-shaped peak can be seen from many parts of the city below.

The mountain is also historically significant as it relates to the Pike Expedition of 1806-07. As the expedition, led by Zebulon Montgomery Pike, crossed the plains of southeastern Colorado, they spotted a high mountain peak off in the distance. They called it ‘Grand Mountain,’ but it would later be named Pikes Peak in honor of Zebulon Pike. Perhaps because it was ‘there,’ Pike decided to try to climb to the top of this ‘Grand Mountain,’ so he set off with a contingent of men leaving the main party behind.

Zebulon Pike was an unlikely choice to lead an expedition into the unknown since, apparently, he could get lost in the bathroom. After several days of trekking, Pike and his men believed they’d reached their destination. But when the weather cleared the next morning, they realized that the peak they were trying to climb was still miles away. Cold, hungry and discouraged, they returned to the rest of their party.

Recent scholarship has suggested that the peak that Pike and his men had actually climbed was Mount Rosa: It lies in the direction that they would have been coming from and certain physical characteristics of the mountain match descriptions in the expedition’s journals. I would like to think that it was and when standing on the summit of Mount Rosa, you are seeing what Pike and his men saw that November morning in 1806.

In 1902, Chicago artist Edgar S. Cameron depicted this scene in a painting entitled “The Discovery of Pikes Peak,” one of several paintings he made depicting events in American history. Cameron used his imagination to create the scene as he had never been there. In 2006, the U.S. Postal Service used the Cameron illustration on a commemorative postal card celebrating the bicentennial of the Pike Expedition.

Getting to the top of Mount Rosa is not difficult for the seasoned hiker, but the roads and trails and shortcuts are not well marked, so, if you’re not from this area, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with some maps first. There are also multiple approaches to the trailhead. A lot of descriptions of the hike exist on the web and I would recommend checking them out before trying. I’ll reproduce one of them (from the trekkingcolorado.com website) here:

From Old Stage Road, turn onto Forest Service Road 379, which goes to Frosty’s Park. You MUST have a high clearance vehicle to proceed the last 1.5 miles up the road to Frosty’s Park. After the meadow turn right and hike along Trail No. 672, also known as Nelson’s Trail, for less than 2 miles. Turn right on Trail No. 673, which pushes steeply up .75 miles to the small rocky summit.

For the record, I parked my car at the intersection of Old Stage Road and FS 379 and walked from there. It adds about 3 miles to the hike, but I didn’t think my small sedan would make it on the forest road.

From the top you can see the city of Colorado Springs to the east, the Penrose-Rosemont reservoir to the southwest and, of course, Pikes Peak to the northwest.

Altitude in Feet: 11503

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