The Sawatch Range is a massive range filled with massive peaks in the center of the Colorado Rockies, forming the Continental Divide stretching from Vail to Leadville to Buena Vista and Saguache. This range includes Colorado's highest peak, Mt. Elbert, and contains fifteen fourteeners, or 14,000-foot mountains, more than any other range in the continental United States. The majority of the Sawatch is covered by the San Isabel National Forest, including four designated wilderness areas: the Holy Cross Wilderness, Mount Massive Wilderness, Hunter-Fryingpan Wilderness, and Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.
Sawatch Range

The Sawatch Range was carved from a huge dome of 1.7 billion year old basement granite, uplifted around 70 million years ago during the Laramide orogeny. During the Ice Age about 2 million years ago, the range was almost completely covered with ice sheet and glaciers, with only the highest ridges emerging through the ice. Today hiking through this range with its hulking but rounded massifs you can't help but feel the ancient origins of the rock and a sense of a once mighty mountain range in a regal age of decline.