Mt. Flora is Colorado's 528th highest peak at 13,146 feet - 3/8/21
As you may recall from the trip report for Cupid, I was supposed to climb Mt. Flora two weeks ago on Feb 22. You can read about what happened here. Anyway, Mt. Flora was conquered on Monday, March 8. Estimated mileage and elevation are 8 miles round trip 2,300 feet elevation gain.
The normal summer trail on Mt. Flora traverses the side of Colorado Mines Peak, a 12,500 foot mountain with some communications equipment on top of it. But since there is some avalanche danger along that route, the safest way to get to Flora in the winter is to take a zig-zagging road that goes 1,200 feet to the top of Colorado Mines.
In the two pictures below that go together, the avalanche danger area is on the far left going down toward the trees. So going up almost to the top of Colorado Mines Peak, as shown in the picture on the right, avoids this area. Unfortunately, what that does is puts you about 400 feet above where the summer trail comes up at the bottom of the saddle, which you can see in the photo on the right. That means there is 800 feet of extra elevation gain on the round trip.
There are some really nice looking wind-blown snow formations on the way up.
Getting closer now. That is the summit right in the middle.
Every one of these wind shelters that people build on the summits, which can be very useful at times, are always filled with snow in the winter, and thus quite useless then.
After the Mt. Eva situation, it was time to head back. Instead of re-climbing Mt. Flora, lunch was had below the summit while traversing it's north face. A smashed PB&J was awesome while I watched a group of 5 or 6 others. I think they were eating lunch too, see them on the left there?
Almost back to my Jeep, heading back down Colorado Mines Peak (after re-gaining that 400 feet, remember? Ouch). Since there aren't really any good pictures of Mt. Flora from a distance, this mountain seen from the road down gives you an idea of about how high it is. Flora's about 200 feet lower than that one.