Gary Swing's Mount Sunflower Visit

On my 32^nd birthday, my wife humored me by accompanying me on a road trip to the highest point in Kansas and two obscure drive-up county highpoints in Colorado.

When we left our home in Denver early on Sunday morning, there was an inch or two of snow remaining on the ground and the local temperature was a bitter 16 degrees. The snow cover concerned me a bit, as I knew we would be driving on dirt roads to reach the high points. I hoped that the roads would not be icy or snowy.

We drove east on Interstate 70 to Kanorado, KS, where we followed the northern approach to Mount Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas. From the Kanorado exit, we went south 13.5 miles on a good but largely unpaved road. Then east (left) 0.4 miles on another unpaved road and south (right) 8.1 miles to another road on the right marked with a sign for Mt. Sunflower.

We turned here and proceeded 1.1 miles to a deeply rutted track across the pasture on the right side. Another sign here indicated that this was the way to the summit. We drove on a secondary track just left of the main one for the final 0.4 miles to the top. This last stretch would have been a pleasant walk in warmer weather.

The drive south from Kanorado was pretty. All the trees and plants were covered with frost, providing beautiful winter scenery. This is an area of small rolling hills, not nearly as flat as the plains I had expected to find here. We had no trouble driving on the dirt and gravel roads. However, it was still bitterly cold when we arrived at the summit and clouds were rolling in, so we spent just a few minutes outside.

Mount Sunflower is a classic, silly state highpoint. It is situated just half a mile east of the Colorado border with higher points visible across the state line. There is some vertical relief, as the gradual northern slope descends more than 100 feet. The summit is adorned with a sunflower seed shaped boulder, a sunflower sculpture, and a summit register in a mailbox.

We signed the summit register and took a few pictures.

This was Kenna's third state highpoint after Delaware and Nebraska. It was my eighth state highpoint, including Colorado, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and New Hampshire. I am not interested in trying to visit all the state highpoints, but I was interested in Mt. Sunflower for two reasons. First, Mount Sunflower is relatively close to Denver. Second, I was a Green Party candidate for state representative in 1996, and the sunflower is the Green Party's symbol.

I am getting into county highpointing, inspired by John Drew Mitchler and Dave Covill's guidebook "Hiking Colorado's Summits." I aspire to climb all of Colorado's 43 mountain county high points and some of the 20 lower highpoints on the eastern plains as well.

The remainder of our Sunday outing would be spent reaching my 25^th and 26^th Colorado county highpoints (Kenna's 4^th and 5^th). My previous highpoint outing had been to Thunder Butte, Colorado's lowest mountain county highpoint (9,836 feet), and Elbert Rock, the highest plains county highpoint (7,360 feet).

We took the southern approach to the 4,440 foot highpoint of Yuma County as described by Mitchler and Covill. It should be noted that the road they say to take east from Colorado Highway 59 is marked RD PP, not CR 0 or CR RR. When we reached Yuma Corner 3.2 miles east of the state highway, Kenna took a picture of me with a windmill in the background, lined up with the photo in the guidebook.

Next, we headed over to Washington County's 5,420 foot highpoint south of Last Chance. Presidents Hill is just a roadside point on the county line 2.2 miles east of CO 71 on County Road 0. Yeah, these are silly highpoints, but hey, at least it keeps me off the avalanche slopes in the dead of winter.

On our way home, we stopped for soft ice cream at Dairy King, the last remaining retail store in the remote community of Last Chance, Colorado. They also had mushrooms, fried okra, and grilled cheese sandwiches at low, low prices.

Gary Swing
gwswing@yahoo.com