Highest Elevation Tacoma

You mean these Palisades?? If you squint, you can see Split Mtn and Middle Pal.

 

Bagged em both. East face and North couloir.

 

Good for you! That's awesome!
I never did climb in the Palisades. I did lose a good friend on the east face of Middle Pal. That was tough.

 

Is Engineer Pass that tough? I did it over 20 years ago in my stock FZJ80 with wife and kids, don’t remember anything difficult about it. Somewhere I have the obligatory picture with the sign. Or has it been allowed to deteriorate to reduce traffic? We took it from 550 to Animas Forks, I think.

 

Nope, a high clearance 2wd can do it no problem

 

More clearance than a stock taco provides

 

Cool thread. Think the highest Ive ever been in my truck was like a day or two after I bought it. Pennsylvania gulch in CO. The factory head unit was showing 1.5 miles in elevation when I finally turned around. Have to see if I can dig that photo up..

Obviously not even close to whats already been posted, but it was wicked cool being there given Im from New England haha

 

Is there a place in the alpine loop to drive to 14k feet? I was at engineer pass and it looked like you could drive a bit further up but I didn’t.

I’m taking some friends up there in early October. I hope to hell we beat the snow at those heights. Otherwise we may be a bit screwed....

This is a cool thread.

 

I’m so glad you didn’t say without rubbin’.

 

Blowout on Mosquito Pass CO 13185' in my 1st Tacoma(98 4cylinder 5 speed). Summer 98, so new I had to get out the owners manual to figure out how to drop the spare

 

12,800 seems like an oddly round number. I bet you could find an NGS benchmark nearby with a precise elevation.

 

The fresh (or not so fresh) diaper.

 

whenever the TMT protesters leave, I'm trying to get my taco up to Mauna Kea (13,800+ or - ) for pic to post here!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea

Here is Haleakala on Maui when I lived there, about 10k feet...

 

I brought my '86 Turbo 4Runner up to the White Mountain trailhead/Bristlecone Pine forest. That was ages ago like 2003, and around 11k'

 

We don’t get the heights along the eastern slope of the Canadian Rockies, we were 8500’ or so up here.

 

Okay, this doesn't count because it's not a Tacoma, but another great high-mountain CO trail is Argentine pass @ 13,207 feet. I believe it's considered the highest pass in the state, although numerous roads (e.g., Mt. Evans and Pikes Peak) go higher. And I'm not sure it's worthy of being called a pass, since only one side is open to vehicular travel these days (the other side is still hike-able).



That white speck at the summit above is my old F150, back in 2015 when we had such hazy skies due to the fires in Washington.



The nearby McCellan Mountain trail is also spectacular. It's actually an old railroad grade, and it takes you to an amazing overlook of Grays and Torrys, and you can watch the distant line of day-hikers like ants on an ant hill. In the above photo, you can see Grays and Torrys on the left, in the distance, and the trail leading up to them from the parking lot in the lower center, near the tree line. The summit of the old narrow gauge route is on the right, where I am parked. It is a beautiful place to watch the sun set, and the line of descending hikers soon lit up the whole trail with their headlamps.



Here is historical image of that summit I just stole from Wikipedia. My panorama was taken from where the crowd of people are standing. Apparently, they incorrectly believed it to be 14,007 feet when it was built, but it is actually 13,587 feet. (Or perhaps they just exaggerated its height, as was the case for many Colorado tourist attractions in the early 20th century.) Hard to believe they brought trains up there!


Edit: Forgot to add, the highest I've taken the Tacoma was Imogene Pass. She never felt so underpowered!

 

Already been posted, but I think Antero takes the win for me. I've been over 13k' many times, but I think the end of Antero is around 13,600'



View of the trucks from near the top of the peak.

 

This looks very familiar...

IMG_1216z by mike digirat, on Flickr

IMG_1217 by mike digirat, on Flickr

Had a good friend propose to his now wife up there that day. @m3bassman

IMG_1232 by mike digirat, on Flickr

 

I'm stuck at home, bored out of my mind... so here is perhaps my most regrettably pedantic post yet. Sorry folks!

As @AKGSD indicated, if you've traversed Engineer Pass, then you've been higher than 12,800 feet! The actual pass, where you transition the saddle between two watersheds, is indeed at the advertised elevation... but the road itself climbs higher as it loops around Engineer Mountain to the southwest. I haven't logged GPS on this route, but based on the USGS topo maps, we can clearly see that the road reaches somewhere between 12,920 and 12,960 feet, just west of Engineer Mountain:

Seconded! But be advised that Mineral Creek is a good bit more challenging.

No, if you want to drive above 14k feet in the continental US, your two options are Pikes Peak and Mt Evans.* They are both paved roads, and are always packed with idiots in rental cars. Yet both are amazing experiences, and if you haven't yet been there, then you should definitely go.

There are five 14ers in the immediate Alpine Loop area, and although I have yet to bag any of them, I can assure you that you can't drive anywhere near their summits. But the good news is that your pickup truck can get you to the best trailheads for hiking any of these peaks. Three of them are day-hikeable from trailheads along Cinnamon Pass -- Handies, Redcloud, and Sunshine -- and in fact, the latter two can be double-bagged. I always wish I had an extra day to spare whenever I pass these trailheads!

The other two, Wetterhorn and Uncompahgre, lie somewhere north of Engineer's eastern approach, but I haven't researched them yet.

The very prominent and compelling trail cut into the mountainside just north of Engineer pass, is sadly not accessible to vehicles, even though I totally wish that it was:



That said, I'm sure there are other mine access roads that can get you slightly higher than the passes in these areas.

I will agree, those are some pretty nice palisades, but here are some totally different palisades located in Colorado, which I think are also nice in their own way:



And one of the nicest aspects of these palisades is that they lie along a publicly accessible 4x4 trail,



which is is in fact another historic narrow-gauge railroad grade. It leads to the Alpine Tunnel,



which at 11,523 feet in elevation, might not seem all that high by Colorado standards, but in fact was the highest and longest narrow-gauge railroad tunnel in the U.S.,



and more interestingly, is higher than any elevation I've seen posted by any vehicle in California yet in this thread.

* And here's the real irony, and the reason for the * next to Pikes Peak and Mt Evans above:

To the best of my knowledge, the highest road in the 48 states is in in fact White Mountain Peak in California (as already pointed out by @grubburg and @dman100 ) at 14,252 ft. But like so many of California's back country roads and jeep trails, it's behind a locked gate, and we'll never get to drive it.

And that I think is what separates Colorado from California at a very fundamental level. We are the state of selfish land barons and authoritarian bureaucrats.

Edit: see my post #67 below regarding other routes above 14,000 feet in Colorado, one of which is also behind a locked gate!

 

@mk5 you just gave me a 2020 mission