At this point I headed up the nice trial to Missouri Mountain. The trail was fairly easy, however once you made it to the ridge you still have a long walk the actual peak. After reaching the summit on Missouri, I looked at the next goal, Mount Belford, which required a lot of elevation loss then gain. This made me remember the route down Missouri's Northwest Ridge. I thought that Roach's book said that it was a class 2 or 3 route (actually the book says it is a class 4 up climb only route, oops). I though that I would be able to make it down the ridge and for go the elevation loss I would have had if I went back down into the valley. I headed off down the ridge and was doing fine for a while until I headed down off the East side of the ridge (the book says the route is down the west side and involved four class 4 maneuvers). On the east side of the ridge I ended up going down into a ravine to an area that had a lot of rotten rock. This ravine ended abruptly with a 120+ft. cliffed out drop off. This was obviously not where I wanted to be, so I bit the bullet and up-climbed and traversed back to the Southwest. I managed to find an easy way down the shale to an area off the back side of Missouri. So after switch backing to the south I descended below the cliffed out area and then traverse back to the North and back to the ridge. From this point I was back on the ridge and luckily above Elkhead pass. The rest of the hike down the ridge was un eventful, and I was thankful for that.

At Elkhead pass I found the other side of Mount Belford Trail, and took it to the intersection with Oxford trail. After going out and back to Mount Oxford I finally summited Mount Belford, went down the 20 some odd switch-backs down Mount Belford trail, and then back down the valley to the TH.