14,294ft. & 14,197ft.

Sangre de Cristo Range

41 & 42/58

“I’m going to rest when I get home from Portugal; actually rest this time,” I remember saying to the friend I ventured into the Chicago Basin with in September.

It was a good idea on paper and I meant it.

I came home from Portugal on October 9th, jet lagged, with a stomach bug.

On October 11th I reached out to a good friend proposing we tackle the Crestones within the week. He agreed, plans were made and the things I had said less than one month prior in the Chicago Basin found a home with all of the other well-intentioned things I’ve ever vowed to change or do (or not do) but never quite followed through with.

I crave mountains for reasons far beyond the views. In a sense, they have been the most reliable, tried and true, relationship I’ve had over the past several years — years that repetitively cracked my mending heart open the second I thought I’d sewn it back together enough to try again. Years that taught me more about what love is through experiencing what it certainly is not.

Mountains don’t crumble because they’re selfish or because they’d prefer someone else. And, although some days it damn sure feels like it, weather doesn’t roll in to sabotage you solely because you set that exact day aside on your calendar. I’ve lived on this planet long enough to know things rarely go as planned, but in the mountains (as with life in general, I suppose) plans going awry isn’t personal, it’s part of the adventure.

I digress. I cherished my time in Portugal with my entire heart, but I suppose if you go long enough without something you love deeply, it doesn’t matter how mundane or thrilling the thing you were doing before was — there will always be a part of you that longs to return to the places and people who bring out the best in you.

I credit my time in Portugal with reigniting my ability to identify an ache I felt as the absence of people I loved. It was important for me and I wrote about it and I’m still processing through that reality and feeling the absence of someone who showed up during the season I spent convincing myself it wasn’t okay to lean on anyone else. (Turns out there are people who leave when you’re leaning, which was all I’d known until I met the one who gave up because I didn’t. Oh, and they all show up with their intentions wrapped in pretty packages, so good luck figuring out which one is which in time, I’ve learned).

Anyways, back to that thing I said about mountains being my most consistent relationship — I missed my mountain friends when I was in Portugal, too.

Friends. A word I’ve found myself using more and more to describe mountains, these days.

I use it most often when I speak of the Sangre de Cristo range, a range I have declared my favorite. The thing about the Sangres is the familiarity — when I stand on a summit in this range, there are 360 degrees of memories. (The friend I summited Little Bear Peak with has what would be a nice, tranquil, panoramic video of the view if it weren’t for me screaming hello to each mountain I recognize and shrieking as I recognized patches of trails in the background. “I’ve been there! I’ve missed them,” you can hear me say with an affectionate sigh).

It’s a quaint range, in an odd area, with the magnificent Great Sand Dunes (another spot that means an insurmountable amount to me) looking like insignificant hills below you.

I’m convinced everything about the region is magic. (And if you aren’t convinced, just wait until you see photos, below, of the way they glow when the sun is leaving the sky for the day).

A good chunk of my most quality conversations, most moving sunrises, most surreal sunsets, clearest star gazing, best views and challenging challenges have been experienced (and overcome) in the ten(ish) as-the-crow-flies miles between Challenger Point and Little Bear Peak — Crestone Peak & Needle were no exception ..

The friend who joined me on the Crestones is one of the three I had met when I solo’d Mount Yale at the start of the previous summer. He was the only one of the three I hadn’t climbed multiple mountains with since.

(That’s another thing about mountains. They connect you. On Memorial Day 2018, four of us had the same absurd idea to drive to a trailhead by ourselves from different areas of the state — Fort Collins, Thornton, Salida & Colorado Springs — and begin climbing that same mountain alone in the dark. We summited within fifteen minutes of each other and sat on the top for a good hour before our staggered trips down. But we’ve stayed connected and to date, twelve of the twenty-eight 14ers I’ve climbed since Mount Yale have been with one or more than one of them. Additionally, I have summited sixteen unique 14ers with people I’ve met on a different 14er — THAT is this community).

An attempt at the Crestones was happening. It was on the calendar, the forecast was clear, a jeep was borrowed and we looked forward to attempting what would be his final Grand Traverse and my first, should we succeed with our plan.

I drove to Colorado Springs the evening before. I was hungry so we walked to a restaurant which promised his favorite buffalo chicken sandwich and as we did so, we pretended the only things we knew about each other weren’t from the two hours we had shared together seventeen months prior.

We proceeded to get approximately four hours of sleep before waking up and driving towards the infamous Colony Lakes trailhead in a borrowed jeep, in the dark.

Our hike began at sunrise. We saw the only other two human beings we’d see all day within the first half-hour of our adventure, neither of the two were attempting the Crestones.

I remember feeling discouraged listening to the wind at the beginning of our trek. One of the individuals we passed on the trail made some grumbly comment about the howling and it negatively effected my mindset. But I also remember my friend telling me the main goal of the day was to have fun and I remember feeling overwhelmingly thankful and at ease for that gracious approach.

We hiked and stopped and talked and snacked and soaked up the mid-October sunshine and beauty. As I previously mentioned, our goal was the “Grand Traverse” between the two summits. There are four traverses labeled as such in the 14er world and before this trip, completing all of them, or even one of them, wasn’t necessarily a goal of mine. But there we were.

P.S. This is the route from afar:Woah, right?! (Thank you, Bill and http://www.14ers.com)

I took my sweet time scrambling up Crestone Peak. The final portion of the route looked like a giant bacon-themed water slide and I remember pointing that out during at least every other one of my one million breaks. (Photo below).

Eventually we summited Crestone Peak and there it was again — all of the feelings that well up inside of me every single time I set foot on a summit. I don’t have words for it, except that it is the most addicting sensation I have ever known and it is what keeps me coming back.

We didn’t stay long because shorter days mixed with my turtle-speed didn’t fare wonderfully with the amount of distance we had yet to travel.

My friend let me take lead on a good portion of the traverse and I remember feeling really pleased with my trail-finding abilities. The final stretch of Crestone Needle is a several-hundred foot scramble, which requires all four extremities and all of the attention you can scrounge up after what you have already endured. A fall from this stretch would, with very little doubt, be lethal.

What a way to ring in my forty-second unique peak I thought as I pulled my shaking body onto the summit.

We snapped a few photos, including a selfie I took (which I later accurately captioned: “Wind blown, exhausted, achy, cold, hungry & happy as can be.”) before beginning our decent. The sun was rapidly sinking by that point and we still had a long way to go.

When it came time to whip the headlamps out, I learned I had made a mistake that I hope to never make again: my headlamp had been turned on inside of my pack and left on for god knows how long. The beam was dim and did nothing to illuminate my path.

To remedy this, my friend would take a few steps and then patiently turn around so I could see where I was going until we got to more certain ground and I could make-due with the moon.

It was a long trek out. In my exhaustion, my brain began to flood, once again, with all of the people I missed. It was like Portugal all over again except this time, I missed Portugal. And then I realized: in a single day, I’ve missed this one boy as much as I missed him during the three weeks I had just spent in Europe. Maybe this is a theme, I thought. Maybe that means something, I thought. Maybe I should tell him, I thought.

It took me another month to tell him. And as the story currently goes, that was too late. (And here I am once more using mountains to make sense of people and people to make sense of mountains).

As we closed in on the very end of our hike, to no fault of his, my climbing partner was a few steps ahead of me. With my head down, as I listened to Lauv, counted my steps, wondered how many more times I had five-hundred steps left and prayed for the car, neither of us realized I had walked right past the curve in the trail, which crossed a bridge I had forgotten about and then dumps immediately into the parking lot.

Eventually I looked up and realized my friend, and the trail, were nowhere to be found. After a few more steps, I stumbled into what had clearly been utilized as campsite and rationalized that I had to be close to the trail. I’ll scream his name, I thought. But in my utter exhaustion, I couldn’t remember the name of the person I had spent the past twenty-four hours with. My brain racked through all of the names of people I’ve previously climbed with. “Kevin,” no. “Benton,” no. “Landon,” no. etc. It finally came to me, “Nick!!” I yelled a few times with no response. I whipped out my phone, which also had minimal battery. I could zoom in on AllTrails enough to know I needed to end up on the opposite side of the river I didn’t remember crossing. I walked towards the sound of the river and looked both ways for a bridge. There was no bridge to be found, but suddenly I saw a light in the distance. I knew the light was from our jeep. With my iPhones flashlight, I trudged across the shallow-enough river and stumbled up the opposing bank. I approached the car from the opposite end of the parking lot. “I just crossed the river without the bridge,” I said in both relief and disbelief. “You just crossed the river without the bridge?” he repeated, understandably confused.

To me, still, the wildest thing about this day was that after everything we had been through and accomplished, those final moments were the ones that felt like the wildest part of the day.

The only time I had questioned my abilities or been uncertain whether or not I would make it home alive occurred on flat ground a few hundred feet from the car.

It was terrifying. And that concept is still terrifying, to me. (Here’s to packing an extra set of AAA batteries, am I right?)

I think, at this point in my life, as I write these words exactly four months after this adventure, here is what it all comes down to — of all the beautiful lessons mountains have taught me, they’ve also taught me, in ways not even working on an ambulance can teach me, that nothing is certain.

Tomorrow isn’t promised. Batteries die. The sun sets. Things crumble. True love is rare (good timing is even more rare). (So maybe say it as soon as you feel it, next time? But also please don’t be this hard on yourself, okay?) People leave this earth unexpectedly. Goodbyes aren’t guaranteed ..

Two of my biggest mountain cheerleaders, one doubling as a mountain mentor, have left this earth during the time I have spent chasing summits.

One, a family friend who lost his battle to cancer last September — weak from treatment and a failing body, he never failed to reach out with an encouraging comment, or to check in during the summer I began throwing myself at mountains. I was able to visit him in his hospital room shortly before he passed in September of that same year. I said thank you and he thanked me for allowing him to live vicariously through me and I cried. I cried because — why was I the one who got to live this life? but also because if I’m fortunate enough to live this life, at least I can do my best to share the beauty with others. I cried again when I opened the program at his funeral and stared at a giant photo of Longs Peak. I’m crying right now thinking about it.

The second, a co-worker who I worked with a handful of times that same initial summer (2018). One day I received a text from a mutual friend explaining that this particular co-worker was bad at names, but he always asks about the “cute tall blonde girl that does all the 14ers, hikes and adventures and is really fun and happy.” (I thought you would enjoy being described that way, the text proceeded to say). We ran into each other enough for him to remember my name, eventually. And eventually that became enough to consider one another a friend. We frequently talked of climbing together “one day” and he always greeted me with a smile and an inquiry about my latest adventure. The last time I ever saw him was this past December. I quickly told him about climbing Elbert in the wintertime, but we didn’t have long to chat — a blizzard was imminent and the helicopter he was in needed to leave the scene immediately. I went to the ambulance to allow the helicopter to safely take off and then noticed the pilot exit the rotor and run off to use the bathroom. I took that opportunity to sprint back over and talk to him about mountains and life in the blustery weather for a few more moments. As the pilot returned, we snapped a quick photo together and said what became our final goodbye. I’m so thankful I took advantage of those two extra minutes and I’m so thankful we took that photo. I’m crying right now thinking about it.

Jerb & Gary: I will keep carrying you with me into these mountains for as long as I can, I promise you that. P.S. Thank you.

“I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain & the words that dance between people & for me it will always be this way, walking in the light, remembering being alive together.” – Brian Andreas