Just a couple weeks ago a group of friends and I took to climbing an easy fourteener in Colorado, Mt. Quandary. LOL TO THAT! After nine hours of climbing, running out of water, zig-zagging up and down rock chutes, and carefully negotiating ourselves down a 70° or so incline called 'the side of a huge mountain,' I decided Mt. Quandary wasn't actually the easiest fourteener I've done.
So after an trip like that, it's only natural to go up two weeks later and climb the tallest mountain in Colorado, the second tallest in the continental US, Mt. Elbert, EL. 14,440.
Goal 60 (for sure and for real): Climb a Huge Mountain
After beating up my car a bit on a 4x4 road, we parked, put on our packs, and hiked into base camp, about a mile up the mountain, just below tree line. The plan was to head all the way up the next day.
TJ was able to acquire Philmont food. Jalapeño squeeze cheese is a delicacy I had long forgotten about.
There was a serious fungi population, from dried up spore-y mushrooms, huge brown mushrooms, to pale puffy mushrooms.
This is Mt. Elbert from the beginning of the path. That's not a false peak. You can pretty much see the entire path in this picture.
We camped in the wilderness, like real hikers.
Here you can see the peak again. It looks pretty far away.
But it was no probs. We summitted the peak in about three hours.
The peak was one of the busiest I had ever been at. There were people on cell phones, Asians on tours, and harsh brisky winds. We had lunch and a Coors on the top, and then turned back down. Brian and I split off from TJ so that we could skip and run down the mountain.
After making it to the top, we went straight down the side of the mountain to some lakes and ponds that were off the path. We also rolled some rocks down a hill, making a serious impact on the bushes below. It was some of the most quality rock-rolling I've ever partook in.
We spotted some beautiful golden aspens, hidden in a forest of green.
As we continued toward our campsite, I spotted a human thing in the trees.
Where there's one human thing, there are more. Brian traced the stream bed up a bit, and found this gem. We took turns unleashing wet drink into the frontier. Knowing full and well that we were seriously changing the course of this stream, in a literal and drastic way, we decided it would be cool and worth it.
The water was exhilarating to watch as it flowed down the stream bed. We were the creators of this water child, and our water child was awesome. We were breathing life into this stream that has probably been dry for years... possibly for good reason.
We decided it would be great to build a dam of epic proportions. A dam that would quench our thirst to see water accelerating down to FEET of gravitational oblivion.
This is what you call 'boring catastrophic failure.' For the next hour or two, Brian and I frantically fill holes and try to engineer ourselves a waterfall.
In the end, we resorted to using man-made resources to make water drop, a basic success.
After we were done with the dam, we were surprised that TJ still had not made it back to the camp. After much debate, we decided it was time to split up, and check up and down the mountain for our friend. I went up past tree line quite a ways, bothered that I couldn't find him. When I returned to camp, I found that Brian had much better luck, and had found TJ at the base of the mountain. TJ couldn't find the trail that went to our camp, so he was prepared to sleep under the stars until Brian found him.
We woke up early the next morning and hiked out. When we got on some higher speed roads, we noticed some serious problems with my car. After trying a few different things, and stopping for a couple of inspections, we finally discovered the muffler had been bent into my CV joint on my rear tire. After attempts to beat it into submission, we ended with a quick fix rock, jammed over the muffler, pushing it down off of the joint. We made it home and that was that. The tallest mountain in Colorado.
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