The receipts
- Distance
- 11.96mi
- Elevation gain
- 4,396ft
- Moving time
- 7:23hrs
- Total time
- 9:54hrs
Two and a half hours of that difference is the part nobody logs. Standing on tops, eating, waiting out weather, holding up cardboard signs. It counts.
July 18, 2026
The first one.
Three men, one trailhead at Kite Lake, and four summits above 14,000 feet before the storm came in.
DeCaLiBron is the only loop in Colorado that puts four fourteeners on one ticket. Most people run it the other way round. We went counter-clockwise. Up Bross first out of the basin with nothing warmed up, then the ridge to Lincoln, a short walk over the shoulder to Cameron, and Democrat last, out and back off the saddle with the weather building behind us the whole time.
Nobody turned around. Everybody finished. That's the entire report.
Straight off the watch · 10,966 ft to 14,586 ft · barometric drift, not survey marks
The roster
Three men went up.
Three came down.
Tony Hulbert
Carried the cardboard. Every summit sign on this page exists because somebody thought ahead about how we'd remember it.
Chris W.
Red henley, every frame, all four summits. You can track the whole day by looking for him on the ridge.
Mark E.
Steady from Kite Lake to Kite Lake. Never made it look easy, never made it look like a question either.
The four
In the order
we took them.
Summit 01
Mount Bross
Straight up out of the basin with nothing warmed up. Going this direction you climb the loose ground that most people slide down at the end of their day, and Bross doesn't soften the message. It tells you early what kind of day you're going to have.
First sign of the day held up. No idea yet whether we'd get all four.
Summit 02
Mount Lincoln
The eighth-highest peak in Colorado and the roof of the whole day, and we were standing on it before the morning was over. From the top you can see the Sawatch stacked up in every direction and the road you drove in on, thin as a scratch, thousands of feet below.
Highest ground any of us stood on all year.
Summit 03
Mount Cameron
Cameron is the great argument of this loop. It's higher than Democrat and higher than Bross, but it doesn't have enough drop between it and Lincoln to make the official list, so purists don't count it.
We counted it. We stood on it. It's 14,238 feet whether a list agrees or not.
Summit 04
Mount Democrat
The one you have to want. By Democrat the legs are gone and the gain is behind you, and it still asks for an out-and-back off the saddle before it'll let you go down. You climb it, you come back the same way, and only then is the day finished.
Four for four. Nobody bailed at three. Clouds already stacking up over the Sawatch.
Nobody describes this one casually. That was the whole point of doing it.
The ledger
What it cost.
| Measure | Result |
|---|---|
| Trailhead | Kite Lake, 12,000 ft |
| Summits above 14,000 ft | 4 |
| Distance | 11.96 mi |
| Elevation gain | 4,396 ft |
| High point | 14,586 ft on the watch · Lincoln is 14,286 ft |
| Moving time | 7 h 23 m |
| Total time | 9 h 54 m |
| Average pace | 36:59 / mi |
| Calories | 3,838 |
| Men who started | 3 |
| Men who finished | 3 |
Afterward
The part that makes it worth repeating
You don't remember the mile splits. You remember sitting down at the end of it with the two guys who did it with you, sore in the same places, having nothing left to prove to each other.
The tradition
One hard thing.
Once a year.
Work hard, play hard. Pick one genuinely difficult thing, go do it with a group of men, and let finishing it mean something. DeCaLiBron was the first. It won't be the last.
Vol. II: Grand Canyon · May 22, 2027
Vol. III: to be announced