14,150ft. | San Juan Range | 45/58

It’s been a long long time since I’ve really sat down and written. I could pick that apart and try to say why — I could tell you that my intentions to write about each and every hike last summer were trampled by a busy and exhausting work week only to pack, turn around and drive to the next trailhead where I prioritized time with the people I was with; how I lucked out with weather and adventure companions last summer and every single week a trip fell into place, culminating with me standing on top of my final 14er, Humboldt Peak, with seven of my closest girl friends on August 31st, 2020.

I could tell you how the winter was a blur and my mind couldn’t slow down, how my brain, filled to the brim with memories felt overwhelmed with the notion of trying to find a time and place to purge everything onto paper (and how each trip — most over a year ago, now, I can still remember with an impressive amount of detail .. less detail than you would’ve gotten had I written about them immediately afterwards but an amount that makes them feel a whole lot more recent than they were).

I could tell you how the recovery for my tonsillectomy was a beacon of free time and headspace to actually, finally, tackle all of this writing — I even texted my Mt Sneffels friend to inform her of my intentions to do so and ask her about what she remembered most.

And I bought a used laptop from someone I trusted so that I wouldn’t have to rig my old Bluetooth keyboard with sticky keys to my older iPad so I could memory dump more efficiently while sitting on the couch recovering.

As it turned out, the MacBook showed up broken and the girl who sold it to me disappeared without any attempt to reconcile the entire months’ rent I had sacrificed to a useless computer she had gotten four years of use out of. I donated the laptop to the Mac store and haven’t heard from her since.

And then my mom died — a week after her retirement, a week after my tonsillectomy, on the day of my 29th birthday.

I inherited her brand new iPad but it’s still sitting in my room, mostly unused and I’m here in the mountains exactly three months after we lost her sitting behind my original set up, still figuring out where to start.

The problem with that, I’ve found, is the longer I wait to decide where to start, the more places I have to choose from.

But I’m here, and I suppose the beginning is a better place than any other to begin (that and, I feel mostly emotionally / mentally incapable of adding any more creativity or thought to a starting point).

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The summer was young, and inspired by the success of two early season hikes, I was feeling particularly ambitious. My tentative goal, to complete the Colorado 14ers by the end of the summer, felt uncertain due to constraints of both COVID-19 and the distance I would have to travel for the majority of the peaks I had left. Early on in my 14er pursuit, I promised myself I wouldn’t chase summits at the expense of enjoying them. I didn’t want my summer to revolve around a checklist and I didn’t desire exhaustion, I wanted an experience — I wanted to be able to look back and identify each peak (or in some cases small groupings of peaks) as a unique memory, which I could pluck out and recall specifically.

As this is all in the past, now, I can honestly say that while completing the 14ers I was also able to satisfy that wish. As this is all in the past, now, I can also say that a repeat of Sneffels was my final 14er before my final 14er. But we’ll get there.

I reached out to the friend I went on this adventure with, asked if she was free during the window of June 14th – 17th, “ideally three days for what I’m scheming,” I told her. Her response, unsurprisingly, indicated both interest and excitement and we began planning.

Spending a night in Blue Lakes Basin had been on my bucket list ever since I day hiked to the basin, and ultimately up to Blue Lakes Pass a few summers prior. I remember being entirely entranced by the lakes. I remember telling Landon at a later date how we’d hiked all the way to the pass before turning around, to which Landon animatedly informed me how unknowingly close we’d been to the summit of Sneffels. I now look at a map and know that, though we were indeed close, I had neither the stamina to do the standard route nor the expertise to get up the southwest ridge that day.

But this summer was different, I possessed both and I was ready to revisit a place that I had spent a few years dreaming of.

We left Sunday afternoon and took i70 to Grand Junction so we could stop by Rifle Falls — a place I had been to in the winter but had always wanted to visit in the summer — we booked a hotel room in Montrose for $59 that night so we weren’t constrained by sunlight or the need to find somewhere to set up camp.

Before falling asleep, I set up my new Garmin inReach which my dad finally talked me into purchasing. In the morning, we finalized the content of our backpacking packs, grabbed breakfast and coffee at a local spot and made our way to the trailhead.

I will forever maintain that the spot we backpacked into is one of my favorite places in the state, though it is becoming more and more crowded and commonly known. The chill of mid-June brought slightly less people wanting stay the night and we were able to find a lake view campsite with little effort. While attempting to set up camp, my tent pole snapped in two — I spent some time trying to fix it, but the way it snapped damaged three separate sections of the pole and I finalized my tents’ fate by trying to utilize a stick to clear out some metal shards from one of the fragments — the stick got stuck in the hollow pole and rendered me ultimately unable to set up a structure that would be able to house both Arlo and I for the night. My gracious friend welcomed Arlo and I both into her own, small, two person tent and we declared my pathetic, dilapidated “structure” our “gear tent” and aptly used it to store the rest of our gear. It quickly became an inside joke and our adventure was effortlessly back on track. I really wish we would’ve gotten a photo of our gear tent, though.

A thick haze settled in from nearby fires that afternoon, but it didn’t keep us from walking around the lake and ultimately setting up hammocks and reading / napping the afternoon away. We intentionally built time to do just that into the plan and I am so thankful we did. I also feel the need to confess that the book I hauled around and read in my hammock on that trip is the same <300pg book I didn’t finish until over one year later. Not for lack of interest or desire (despite my turtle-pace, I count it one of the best books I’ve ever read), but perhaps that sheds even more light on the mental state I’ve been in of late ..

I feel incapable of allowing myself to slow down enough to stop, sometimes. I allot time to drive hours and hike miles and work full-time, but very little to squeeze any semblance of rest (or grocery store trips) into the mix. It’s been an exhausting lifestyle, but one that has more or less suited my worlds’ events and my methods of processing through it all.

We began our hike the next morning early enough for me to snap one of my favorite sunrise photos I’ve ever taken as we made our way out of the basin. We made good time to the pass and then began our scramble up the southwest ridge of Mt Sneffels — helmets on our heads, ice axes tied to our packs, eager to route find and scramble and see the world from a new vantage.

This was one of my friends’ first Class III summits and my first time being the primary route finder and it turned out to be a perfect route for just that. We did briefly utilize or axes in a steep gully and found the remainder of the route to be dry and straightforward. My dog, who joined us, took the entire route like a champ. He never ceases to amaze or impress me in the mountains.

We summited together and were greeted by a beautiful, cleared up view of the surrounding and still snow covered peaks before descending via the very loose standard route. Approximately 2/3 down the loose, steep scree Sneffels’ standard route is known for, my friend realized her phone had fallen out of the side pocket of her leggings. Immediately I began reascending hopeful the sun would catch the screen and we’d be back on our way shortly. By some miracle, I spotted her phone mostly buried within ten minutes of her realizing its’ absence and we were back on our way to the basin, trail beers in hand, in no time. We chalked me finding her phone up to payback for her sharing our tent.

We packed up camp and left a place that will forever be dear to me and we’re back on the trail enroute to my coveted post-hike nachos all in good time. (I can confidently say that Taco Del Gnar has some of the best, albeit most unique, nachos I’ve ever had and it would not be the last time I enjoyed those nachos after summiting Mt Sneffels in the summer of 2020).

When I got home, my dad, who had been glued to the Garmin website for the majority of our trip proudly told me that he knew we were on the summit before he even received my summit message. He proceeded to tell me that he saw we had gone down a different way than we had ascended. “Did you get lost?!” he sincerely asked me. I laughed and assured him that, as always, I had a plan and felt I was as prepared as possible for the route that was ahead.

A well-timed assurance, because my next 14er of the summer would be his first 14er ever.