14,081ft. & 14,165ft.

Sangre de Cristo Range

20-21/58

I think my co-workers thought I was insane this summer. Scratch that, I know they did. Every morning, I would sit at the fire station kitchen table with my planner, my phone and a book that outlined the intricacies of each mountain. I would spend hours scribbling in arrows and rearranging mountain names. I studied routes, calculated driving distances and religiously checked weather forecasts as the day got closer. Excitement would well up in me as a plan came to fruition and then I would stand up from the table and limp away.

I had visions of post-walking-across-Spain me maintaining momentum, hiking mountains all summer and running up them by the end. But as my cardio improved, my leg deteriorated. People would frequently make comments about how I must be in such good shape, but the truth was I didn’t work out at all outside of my hikes this summer. I couldn’t. I was in too much pain. I got up most of the mountains by sheer determination.

I knew something was wrong, I didn’t know what, but I also didn’t want a paper trail documenting I was instructed to rest, because I knew I wasn’t going to. I was told my multiple people this was unwise. They were probably right and I’m paying for it now, but for me, the healing from the mountains outweighed the leg pain and I will always maintain that.

I digress.

Challenger and Kit Carson had been on the calendar for over a month. On May 28th, I met three others on top of Mount Yale. We spent an hour on the summit drinking summit beers, talking about who we were and what led us to that very moment. It was beautiful and to this day I group Mount Yale into my top 14er experiences largely because of it.

The four of us kept in touch. We’d persistently throw out dates despite our ever-conflicting schedules in the hope that someday we’d be able to adventure together again. Three of us were finally able to settle on July 8th. I got a shift covered, we meticulously chose our mountain(s) and we waited for the day to arrive. And then it did, as dates which seem they may never get here always do, and there was no way I was backing out.

Now, when I say I got a shift covered, what I mean is I got the night portion of my 24hr shift covered. The plan was I would get off work at 7pm, drive home to pick up my dog and then pick up friend number one in north Denver (one hour away). We would then meet friend number two in Salida (another three hours away) and go to the trailhead in Crestone, CO (another hour away) from there. (Whoever is reading this probably agrees with my co-workers sentiment that I’m crazy by this point. It’s cool. I’m used to hearing it).

We got to the trailhead at 0130, “slept” until 0300 and were on our way.

For this hike, I had resorted to the torn apart shoes I’d trekked across Spain in. As we began our hike through sandy terrain and unsure footing, I was thankful for shoes that felt like home, but I was also quickly reminded that damage had already been done.

Barely a mile into the 14.5 mile – and 6,250ft elevation gain – hike I resolved to tell my friends I would be turning around. Today was not my day. I had pre-meditatively packed a hammock and more than enough books and craft supplies to keep myself occupied for the length of their climb. I would rendezvous with them in the nearest town whenever they were finished. (I truthfully never expected to summit these peaks. It was the first adventure all summer I didn’t pre-make my summit signs for. Instead, I had shoved two pieces of paper and a marker in my pack “just in case,” unwilling to preemptively waste the paper). As I was trying to piece together the words to eloquently break the news to my friends, we turned a corner, which opened up to the 0330 silhouette of the most magnificent distant mountain.

The pain didn’t resolve. It never did, in fact I ended the hike with a wider variety of pain than I began with (including the two humorous but painful tumbles I took on the way down), but that moment gave me something. I’m not entirely sure what, but it was enough.

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Challenger Point is, appropriately, a challenge. It would be with or without leg pain. It took us a comparable amount of time to hike the final 1.5 miles as it did the first 5 miles. Upon summiting, we continued on to Kit Carson Peak. The Kit Carson “avenue” is a beautiful portion of trail that wraps around Kit Carson and leads you to summit from the south side, not without its own final strenuous push. I was slow and my gracious friends were patient, but we did it. All three of us. And the dog.

As we sat on the summit, I stared out over the infamous Great Sand Dunes National Preserve, which looked measly from 14,165ft up. I remembered staring at the very range I was on top of from a family vacation years ago and then from a school camping trip years after that. I remember thinking the backdrop was magnificent, but not once did it cross my mind that I would climb the mountains that made up that backdrop someday.

And then I looked out over the other six Sangre de Cristo 14ers, with the breathtaking Crestones in the forefront.

I took it all in.

With an achy leg, torn apart shoes, after a twelve hour shift, five hours of driving and an hour and a half of “sleep,” I knocked out two more 14ers. And I was sitting on top of my 21st with two incredible humans I’d met on a different mountain.

You can’t emulate moments like that. You can’t make them up. I can’t articulate everything that welled up inside me during that experience. You just have to go find it on your own.

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“Don’t fear the pain, use it. Keep it there beside you and maybe, just maybe, it will give you the words to say or the notes to play, for sometimes it is flying with what hurts that gives us the colors to paint with.” – Atticus

** Although this quote applies to my life physically as much as it does emotionally, mentally, spiritually etc. lately, I want to be clear: I don’t write this to condone pressing forward physically at the expense of injury. I’m trying to be wise and listen to my body and I’ve clearly struggled with balance, and at times priorities, along the way. I’m trying to not be an idiot. I’m trying to learn how to know what pain I need to let go of and what pain I need to address; and that applies to the pain of all nature: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual.