Man, I’m wiped out. So’s my dog.

This weekend I racked up a whole bunch of great experiences with Hooper, and we (and Brenda) are all tired out! Hooper ran with Jasper and Jackson for about an hour straight Saturday morning, which warmed my heart as I watched him interact with other dogs instead of just playing fetch. Last night, pissed that I didn’t have my camera to document the aforementioned morning trot with the cattle dogs, I brought my camera and got some nice pics of Hoop and the local pack having their usual fun. And today, Brenda, Hooper & I hiked up to Lost Lake near Eldora and enjoyed being outside, the three of us. I love this guy.

Today is Hooper’s birthday, making Hooper one year old! In truth, we brought him home at six months of age, and he was picked up as a stray in Utah sometime before that, so unfortunately we really don’t know the exact circumstances or conditions of his conception, birth and early development. The vet guessed he was six months old, based on his teeth, when we took him in or his first checkup in early August. So we counted back from there and picked Groundhog Day as his “birthday”. In truth we’ll never know, and we don’t care. Just as we’ll never really know his genetic makeup. He’s Hooper the Dog, he’s ours, he’s one today, and we love him. So we took him out for a hike.

Up past Jamestown there’s a trail that meanders through the tall trees and it seemed as good as any for a winter hike. Hooper seems to love the hiking, the snow, the altitude, the adventure, as much as all of us. Once out of the car, he starts whimpering if we don’t get on with the business of plodding through the snow in a timely fashion. He’s generally uninterested in drinking water because that would involve stopping. Instead, he snags chunks of snow and ice on the fly, and keeps on marching.

Today’s hike led to a vague trail hidden by snow, and Brenda eventually became more interested in scaling a boulder for the view at the top than continuing to the summit. Hooper & I ventured onward, but he kept looking back at Brenda and I lost all sight of anything recognizable as a trail, so we headed back to join her. We snapped a few pics, headed back to town and picked up new treats and toys for the birthday boy. He’s cached out on his bed now, amidst the debris of yet another destroyed stuffed toy. Life is good.

Any doubts about Hooper’s hiking abilities, including high altitude, cold/snow, distance, have been put to rest. Hooper is a wonder dog.

With the holiday weekend winding down, and with the entire Front Range experiencing a very late start to the snow season, I decided to go up to Brainard Lake and scope out the trail to Mount Audubon, a hike that Brenda & I successfully did last summer. Mount Audubon stands over 13,000’ tall, so generally by this time of the year it’s totally covered with snow and is a challenge to summit. But with the dearth of snow we’ve had so far this year, I thought it might be a doable climb, and a great intro for Hooper to a longer and higher hike. Brenda’s been a bit under the weather, so she stayed home but Hooper & I headed out around 8:30 this morning to see what kind of trouble we could get into.

The access road to Brainard Lake is closed this time of year, which adds another two miles of walking just to get to the trailhead; I totally underestimated the impact of this, especially in winter with all the snow. Forty minutes after we left the car, we finally arrived at the Marshall Lake trailhead (I was totally going from memory of our hike last year, and I have to say I was pretty happy that I was able to find my way back!). At this point, I had already pulled a couple of chunks of ice from Hooper’s paws and his whiskers had icicles hanging from them, but he seemed interested in nothing but proceeding in a forward direction. I decided to hit the trail for a little while.

As we walked along the trail, I recalled the great hike Brenda, Bryce and I did up this trail last summer, and on we pushed, through the snow. I decided we should at least try to make it to treeline…

When you hike these high peaks, you eventually reach a point somewhere around 11,000’ there the oxygen is so thin, most vegetation gives up and heads for lower ground: treeline. You emerge from the cover of the thicket of trees and enter a rocky moonscape, windy and barren; ironically, I find myself the most alive when I’m up there.

And so when we emerged from the trees, and the winds began to blast us—no longer shielded by the trees—I concluded that we simply must continue on. I was not expecting to make the summit, but I wanted to press on for a little bit at least, in hopes of making the ridge before the final push to the summit where there are some spectacular views in their own right.

The winds picked up as we pressed on, and there was little shelter available for relief from the wind. Checking my watch I realized we had been walking for almost two hours, and simple math makes that out to be a four hour hike to the car, so I decided we were done for the day. I found a spot that wasn’t quite so windy, fed Hooper some food, and snapped a few pics:

Here’s my favorite picture from the day, with Hooper looking at some hikers on a lower peak while Long’s Peak looms in the background:

After that pic was taken, we headed back home, and arrived at the car three and a half hours after we left. Looking at a topo map after we got home, I estimate we turned around just a little short of the goal, but sill walked about ten miles in total and got up well over 12,000’ high. After giving him dinner, Hooper has been asleep ever since, but I think he’s proven his mountain mettle. Next summer is gonna be awesome. You’ll be seeing us on top of many high peaks, you can bank on it.

It’s been a while, again. First off, it’s Facebook’s fault. That’s right, I joined Facebook and I can’t seem to stop checking in every day to update my “status” message and see how many friends my friend Lauren has. But, that’s not the purpose of this post. Discussion on the insanely silly endeavor of Facebook will surely follow, maybe after Thanksgiving.

Anyway, Brenda has been working crazy hours again, and it all came to a head over the last couple-few weeks, and finally ended this past Thursday, when the show she was building some suits for opened at the University of Colorado. And it turns out that the guy who she was working for has a condo in the mountains that was going unused this weekend, so we loaded up the truck and moved to Keystone… resort that is; snowbarders, movie stars…

Brenda & I (and Hooper) had not been in the mountains in the winter yet since moving to Colorado, and it was fantastic. So far this year, old man winter has not really visited the near mountains but that’s ok with us since we’re not skiers or snowboarders. But this gave us a chance to experience a typical Colorado mountain resort town at the beginning of the high season, and it was certainly entertaining for us.

With Hooper settled in the condo, we headed out into the village to find some lunch. As we walked through “town” (Keystone resort is home to several fabricated centers of Starbucks and clothiers and liquor stores situated maze-like, Disney-style, around the lifts) we started to absorb the amalgam of skier/snowboarder fashion/lingo/gait/attitude. At one point Brenda said “uh, yeah, we’ve definitely entered a foreign world”, and I could only laugh and agree. I have been soaking up some of the lingo just from listening to office conversations about ski conditions (apparently the amount of base is important, and for some, a nice run of groomers is awesome, but that definitely outs you as a skier and the boarders will, like, totally frown on you), and I caught some glimpses of the fashions in the sale circulars every week last year, but it wasn’t until we walked through a living breathing throng of True Believers that I really came to grips with the odd, different, and let’s face it, totally cool world of alpine sports.

There’s a certain swagger that the snowboarders have; it almost seems like they’re fully conscious of the outlandishly baggy nylon clothes they’re wearing, emblazoned with obviously targeted graphics that they’ve paid a lot of money for, but don’t care (and to those of you that truly don’t care, I salute you; especially those that can’t really afford all that shit.

The skiers, then: they have this cool way of slinging their skis over one shoulder and hooking their arms over the end of the skis, backing that up with a swagger all their own, a more muted swagger that seems to say “we were her first, assholes, don’t fuck with us (but boy, it sure does seem like you guys are having a simpler, cooler time of things)”.

I was struck by the sense that this was one big party that I had no idea was going on (god dammit); at every bar (of which there were several), there were racks out front where people would leave their boards or skis, after a hard day of sliding down the slopes. My initial reaction was to look for some sort of locking mechanism, but there was none; these people were leaving their high priced equipment at the door, unlocked! This did not compute for this northeasterner. Inside, people sat around and ate and drank in the gear they wore all day as they careened down mountains on slippery planks of various sizes with no brakes. I felt inadequate. I ordered a beer. Here’s what we woke up to, out the front door of our place:

Brenda, Hooper and I made the best of our abilities by going on a couple of short hikes, punctuated with Hooper discovering his love of snow (or perhaps re-discovering; Hooper was a stray from Utah and we figure he was born around early February of 2007, so he’s probably no stranger to snow, but who knows?).

We left early on Sunday, took a scenic way home along the Peak-to-peak Highway, and got home in time to enjoy an early dinner at Zolo Grill, one of our favorite restaurants in Boulder. All in all, a great way to spend Brenda’s first free weekend in a long time.

After a long, long, very long winter, I’m here to tell you that spring is on its way, and is settling in nicely. I realize I just marshaled the weather gods to unleash a furious last ditch winter storm sometime in the coming weeks, but I don’t care; Colorado is becoming beautiful again!

I went for a bike ride today, in 70 degree weather under blue skies (and discovered that my new bike has a really nasty propensity for high speed front end shimmy). Last week I read the latest Backpacker magazine and picked out a few choice fourteener hikes I want to do this year. Brenda and I made some headway on our foyer & landing flooring project this weekend, and I hope to be done with that one soon so we have more free time on the weekends to go hiking. This time last year, we had already crested Green Mountain and Bear Peak, but this winter was a whole different animal — one that I hope is an endangered species.

The point is, summer is on the way, and I couldn’t be happier.

Today Brenda & I got up to Brainard Lake for some snowshoe hiking. It’s nice to be able to access some of the trails we liked in the summer, and snowshoes allow us to do that. We got our snowshoes all the way back in October, and we used them exactly once — long enough to figure out that we needed some waterproof pants to enjoy ourselves up there. Between then and now, we had lots of blizzards and Brenda was very busy with work, so we have not gotten a chance to get back out there until this weekend.

It was worth the wait; we hiked on the snowshoe-only trail up to Brainard Lake, which afforded great views of Mount Audubon which we had hiked last summer. The deafening silence of the woods is muffled further by the snow, and the blanket of white everywhere lends a new feel to a familiar trail. I hope to get some more snowshoe hikes in before the end of the season, but I gotta tell ya, some other outdoor enthusiasts caught my eye: cross-country skiers.

Gliding along the snow with their long skinny skis, these people seemed to be having a lot of fun as I plodded along in my big clunky snowshoes. I think this is next on the list of things to try. Meanwhile, here’s a link to some photos from today:

Snowshoe Hiking Photo Album

OK so the other day I told y’all about the impetus for our attempt on Long’s Peak, and then I fell asleep. Lemme tell ya how the walk went.

Walking to the top of Long’s Peak takes time, lots of time. The most popular route is called the Keyhole Route, and it is the “easiest” way to go, containing the least “technical” sections and least “exposure” (refer to my previous post for the straight shootin’ definitions of these terms). The downside is that it’s just a damn long trail. Seven miles from trailhead to the summit means you’re looking at a 14 mile walk with some scary stuff at the end, so yeah, it’s going to take time. On top of that, the afternoons often bring strong thunderstorms complete with hail and lightning. The last place you wanna be when one of those dark clouds roll in is up on those rocks, so this is what leads you to a 3AM start time. Some people start even earlier than that.

And so it was 3:00 a.m. when Brenda & I woke up in our tent, shooting for a 3:30 a.m. start time. Camping, as I mentioned previously, still is not something I can get used to, but it’s a necessary evil in this case; waking up one mile into the hike is a good way to get a good start, after all.

With everyone dressed and fitted out with lots of water and food, we embarked on our adventure. By 3:50 a.m. we were on the Long’s Peak trail and headed in the right direction, seeing only what our headlamps could illuminate for us.

A couple hours later, we arrived at the “sky potty”, one of the highest johns in the park. As we headed off on the Long’s Peak Summit Trail from there, the sun began to rise in the east:

We were now well above treeline, the trail resembling more of a moonscape than a forest, and the stark, artificial light from the headlamps only exaggerated that effect. Slowly but surely, the sun painted the sky in a dazzling array of constantly-changing pastels. At this point, we were walking west, but we always knew when a major sky event was happening, because the rocks in front of us would change color and vibrance along with the sky. We were turning around every few minutes to witness a completely different sunrise scene.

Now about 4.5 miles into the hike and above 12,000’, the sun is fully out and shining, and the next big goals are revealed — The Boulder Field, and the route’s namesake, The Keyhole. Things are going well at this point, the hike is relatively easy and we’re making good time. Far off in the distance, the Boulder Field looks flat and The Keyhole is but a speck in the center of the photo below:

We walk along a stream, progressing toward the Keyhole. Long’s Peak — on the left in the photo — is starting to look really impressive. It’s as if it’s taunting us. The thing is massive, and beautiful.

Finally, we arrive at the Boulder Field, a broad expanse of giant rocks. Nothing else to do but keep walking, and now six miles and in and nearly 13,000’ high, we get a good look at the Keyhole:

There is no real trail through the Boulder Field, so you basically just aim for the Keyhole and try not to get into trouble. A very steep section awaits at the end of the Boulder Field that gets you up above the 13,000’ mark, and a great view of the giant hanging rock formation that seemed so small two hours ago.
The scale of this thing is unbelievable. That’s Bryce about to cross through the ‘hole:

We turn around for a quick peek at all the way we’ve come so far…

And now, at 13,200’ above sea level and after six miles of hiking, the hike actually starts.

The Keyhole is the doorway to the other side of the mountain, the final mile of the hike, and four distinct sections that each present their own challenges. The Ledges, The Trough, the Narrows and the Homestretch await. The last six miles took four and a half hours to complete; the final mile will take two more, all by itself.

Leslie had told me all about these sections, and I had read other accounts as well. But I still didn’t get it. The last mile of Long’s Peak has whatever you’re bad at: afraid of heights? The Ledges and The Narrows feature plenty “exposure”, where you’re often walking on 12” wide rock with sheer dropoffs. Have trouble with the steep stuff? The Trough is an unbelievably beautiful bowl of steep, loose rock that seems to have no end, and the Homestretch is a slab of rock that’s short on places to stand.

These sections are so sketchy that sometimes the trail you’re supposed to take elicits a “you’ve gotta be kidding me” reaction. For this reason, they’ve spray painted little targets (called “fried eggs” or “bullseyes” in most trail descriptions) onto the rocks to guide you along. You can see one of the bullseyes between Brenda and Leslie in the pic below:

After the endless scramble up The Trough, we are greeted by a difficult gatekeeper of a rock that marks the entrance to The Narrows:

Your reward for completing The Narrows is called The Homestretch, and I guess in my head I figured this part would be easy, I don’t know why. It wasn’t. The Homestretch is a two tenths of a mile long slab of rock sloped 40 degrees, with chinks in the rock that often are the only hand and footholds available. Looking down, you can see that one slip at the wrong time could lead to a long but fast journey down the mountain, with a shitty ending. It’s scary. I got into a few dead ends on this stretch, and had to traverse some sketchy parts of rock to get to safer and more secure footing. Brenda, Bryce and Leslie looked down at me wondering if I was gonna make it, but at this point there was only 100 yards to go; there was no way I wasn’t.

I regret the lack of photos to tie in to this part of the story, but I guess that says something about the mood and difficulty of these final sections; I really needed my hands on the rocks, and couldn’t spare them for camera holding at this point!

A few more careful steps, and we were at the summit:

After a mountaintop lunch and some wandering around, I signed the register and we all posed for one more pic at the very edge of The Homestretch. What’s going though my head at this point is “this is going to suck way more going down than it did going up.”

The descent down the Homestretch was indeed scarier than the ascent, but we simply took our time and crabbed our way down the thing. Along the Narrows was a no-brainer but we turned the corner and shimmied down the gatekeeper rock to witness the Trough in all its glory, and some thunderstorms in the distance. Thinking how unpleasant the Ledges would be if soaking wet, we tried to pick up the pace and really hustle down the Trough, but the fact is it’s a long way down:

We got through the Keyhole and down the Boulder Field without incident and I thought to myself “phew, the hard part’s over”, but the fact remained that there was over five miles of walking left to do! We took a break while Lelsie treated some stream water for us (water is the key to not getting altitude sickness, I’m convinced), I inhaled another Cliff Bar and off we went.

Back along the stream and down towards the Sky Potty we walked, admiring some new scenery despite the out-and-back course; much of this area lay under cover of darkness when we passed it in the morning.

A deeply resonant rumble of thunder belched out from the south side of Long’s Peak, and we all looked at each other nervously. All around us was blue sky, but we imagined a large storm just on the other side. Would it march north and get us? Who knows. Nothing to do about it but keep going.

As we got below treeline I breathed another sigh of relief, feeling slightly more protected should a storm come in. Eventually we reached our campsite at Goblin’s Forest, and it was time to pack up and get outta Dodge. I wasn’t looking forward to carrrying all the extra weight of our camping gear for the last mile, but it actually wasn’t too bad. At this point I’m running on adrenaline, with the end in sight!

With a quarter mile to go, I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to look. Turns out a deer was standing about six feet from me, just off the trail. He would have been happy to let me walk right on by, but my stopping spooked him a bit and he ran back about ten feet. Brenda, Bryce and Leslie caught up to me and I simply pointed at the deer. We all stood there staring at each other until the deer got tired of that and stalked off.

Finally, around 5:30 p.m., we arrived at the Ranger Station and our car. We’d just completed 13 hours of walking, with challenges and amazing views all along the way. It felt good. As I pulled my boots off I thought “well, that’s that, I don’t have to do that ever again”, but I’m already thinking about the next time. Hiking has (clearly) become an addiction for both Brenda and me, and it’s these big peaks that really do it for us now. The views are incredible and the effort is fun. The sense of accomplishment you feel when you look up at something like Long’s Peak and think to yourself “yeah, I was up there”, is really hard to put into words.

Another great day in Colorado! I love it here.

What started as a mild curiosity turned into a fascination, and then, a goal: Long’s Peak. It’s got a catchy name, it sounds distant and imposing, and it is. It’s tall, it’s beautiful, it’s scary looking at times, and get this: Brenda & I summited the damned thing this past Tuesday.

Standing 14,255 feet tall, Long’s Peak is the tallest mountain in Rocky Mountain National Park and a very popular destination for hikers, but it’s not the easiest “fourteener” to summit. Every recent year, some 15,000 people attempt to make the summit and about 9,000 succeed. Usually weather is the culprit for failed summit attempts, but many simply turn back after reaching one of the five obstacles that await the hapless hiker after six or so miles of hiking; places called The Boulder Field, The Ledges, The Trough, The Narrows, and The Homestretch. I should have realized that if a little patch of trail gets its own friggin’ name, then it’s probably got something to it.

This all started when Brenda & I were buying our home in Boulder, CO, and we and our home inspector got to talking about Colorado in general and hiking in particular. “Oh yeah, you’ll love it out here,” he said… “the hiking is great; you’ll have to go up to Estes Park and hike in Rocky Mountain National Park… a big one is Long’s Peak; the views are great and it’s a great hike… because of the afternoon thunderstorms you have to be off the mountain early in the day… most people start early (I’m still thinking 6:00AM is early) so they start at two or three in the morning, with headlamps… the views are incredible…” — Headlamps?!? These people hike in the dark? What the hell is wrong with these people? Where in the hell have we moved to, I thought. I looked for pods in our garage, but didn’t find any.

Well, let me tell ya what’s happened. Since that day, Brenda & I have moved into our little condo in Boulder and have started hiking the many local trails that are within miles of our home, some leading to peaks that afford views of the Rocky Mountains that are simply breathtaking. I mean it; these views are fucking breathtaking. Like, you go “holy shit” when you look, and then think to yourself that not only is this an amazing thing to see, but that you’ve got yourself to this amazing place.

Green Mountain, Bear Peak and South Boulder Peak followed in short order after moving here. Our eyes turned westward, toward the higher peaks; as luck would have it our friends Bryce and Leslie were into the hiking scene too. Talk of doing Long’s started while Brenda was down in Santa Fe; Leslie had done it last year and was ready for another attempt this year, and regaled me with tales of the hike while we did Bear Peak a couple months ago (this was the same hike where I sniffed a tree, which Bryce counted as a personal triumph and remains a bit of material worthy of a blog post, but I digress).

And so it was with motivation from two friends and my own stupid fascination with the peak of Long’s that Brenda & I began to train for the higher altitudes, with the goal of summiting on Long’s Peak this week. First, we did St. Vrain’s Mountain, then we did Mount Audubon. Lastly Brenda & I did Mount Elbert together, the highest mountain in Colorado. I thought we were prepared. We were, sorta.

See, the problem is the word “exposure”, and maybe the term “Class 3 climbing”. You read in the books and on the websites that Long’s “can be dangerous”, and that “there is exposure” on the hike. Let me clarify these terms for you all, in the best New Yorkey way I can:

“can be dangerous” means: IS fucking dangerous.
“exposure” means: you can die on this section, easily; bad fucking luck is all you need.
“Class 3 climbing” means: you will be clutching little fucking chinks in the rock, clawing your sad ass to a safer place, cursing motherfucking gravity and all the previous goddamned authors of a Long’s Peak ascent the whole fucking time.

This was hard, and not because I had to camp again for the first time in 14 years (it still sucks ass, despite the advances in sleeping bags and the advent of Thermarests). It was hard because it was still far (we camped at Goblin’s Forest campground, a mile or so from the trailhead, but still miles and miles and miles from the summit), and it held untold surprises, despite all the stories I had heard leading up to the hike.

A step-by-step account is in order, but for now it is time to go to bed, sorry.

Today Brenda & I hiked to the top of Mount Elbert, the tallest mountain in the state of Colorado. At 14,433’ above sea level, it’s second only to California’s Mount Whitney (by about sixty feet) for tallest mountain in the lower 48 states. Today, we stood on the top of Colorado, and it was a hell of a feeling. Our first “fourteener”. Yeah!

Now, Elbert is considered an “easy” fourteener. And it is, I guess. The thing is massive, so the approach ends up being fairly shallow the whole way. But you’re still walking six miles across and 4,000’ up, and then get to reverse and repeat the process to get back to the car. We were quite pleased with our performance, regardless of the “easy” rep Elbert enjoys. We passed several people on our way to the summit, and got the whole ordeal completed in 7.5 hours, including spending 40 minutes up there just looking around.

At the summit I had to chuckle, as I looked across the valley at Leadville, CO. Just a couple miles south of town is Lake County Airport, the highest public airport in the lower 48. And here we were, looking down on it! Pretty amazing. A few planes flew by while were were near and on the summit, and it was kinda cool to be looking directly at them, or looking down on them. In the photo below, you can make out the town of Leadville in the center and the long runway at the airport just to the south of town.

The clouds started building and we decided to get the hell outta Dodge a little before 11AM. The general idea is to be off the mountain by early afternoon, lest you get roasted by a nice bolt of Colorado mountain lightning. Below treeline, there were loads of charred trees and pulverized stumps to serve as reminders of what happens up there when the afternoon thunderstorms unleash their energy. After heading back to the (really nice) B&B we stayed at for a quick shower, we headed home. As we drove along RT24 we watched Mount Elbert get quite a soaking from an afternoon rainstorm, but thankfully no lightning; we knew full well that there were still a bunch of people on that hill, as we had passed them on their way up just hours ago.

All in all, it was a great weekend and a great hike, and I think we’re as ready as we can be for our attempt on Long’s Peak. Stay tuned.

The Long’s Peak preparations continue, and this weekend it was Mount Audubon (our first thirteener!). Once again, the views were amazing and the hike was a huff-and-puff extravaganza as we neared the summit. As usual, the summit revealed views that made it all worthwhile, and something about the effort and the oneness with nature even causes me to eat rice cakes and fresh fruit — and actually enjoy it — while I’m up there. So this hiking thing is really healthy for me, all ‘round.

From the top you could see Long’s Peak, and it sorta just stood there saying “yeah, that’s right, I’m right over here, bitches; whenever…”

Leslie was headed for Peru on the day of the hike (on any given day in Boulder, you probably know someone who is on their way to some hiker’s paradise) so it was just Brenda, Bryce and myself. We had a ball and more pictures are sure to follow, I just need to go to sleep right now.

On the way home we made a quick stop in Nederland, to pick up some acid. (Anyone who knows me knows that this was not for me. The last thing I need to see is a melting floor, or say, a purple rabbit. I merely mention this because I think it’s pretty damned funny.)

Yesterday’s long day was followed by another great day today, where we got to once again see our dear friend Patty who was visiting her brother in Parker, CO and we celebrated her niece Grace’s fourth birthday with presents, cake and amazingly sweet Colorado corn (and yes, Patty once again brought cold cuts!).