A Friend and I wanted to do Harvard-Columbia this weekend, with plans to backpack in Saturday evening and complete the hike on Sunday. We are both about 40 and in pretty good shape - Run 5Ks in about 20 min, and have each summited several 14ers before (10 for me, 5 for him).
Arrived at the trailhead at about 4pm Saturday and backpacked into Horn Fork Basin. Even for a summer Saturday there were still plenty of spots available.
Left camp at 7am Sunday morning and summited Harvard in 2.5 hours. Trail was in good condition and very easy to follow.
Got a weather update on the summit and saw that it was still calling for a 0% chance of precip, so decided to go for the traverse, leaving at 9:45.
We had read to expect and plan for 2 hours to complete the traverse. It took us a full 3 hours and met another group on Columbia that said it took them 4, so I would plan for more in that time range. Directions from 14ers.com were very easy to follow and pretty straight forward for the traverse, it was just long. The talus/boulder field was just time consuming, but nothing technical.
Hung out on the summit of Columbia for closer to 30 minutes and headed back down to camp which took about an hour and half. Want to send out gratitude to CFI for the work on that trail. Truly awesome job.
Packed up camp and made it back to the trailhead at about 4pm.
The full loop took us about 2 hours longer than expected, but still had a great time.
Total time from camp to car including breaks = 9:15:00. Afternoon hike to camp Saturday was about 1:30, so 10:45 for everything.
