14,000 feet and counting

Sunday, 2019/09/22

The day starts early, as days like this do. It's dark and cold outside and I stumble half-asleep to the car, which smells like coffee and half-finished dreams. I double-check that I've brought all the things: my day pack, my water bottles, my greasy breakfast of potato chip nachos: check, check, check. Last week a sudden spiking fever (poor Dan) prevented us from trying what we're about to try, but now there's nothing in our way. Let's do this.

Salem's chill playlist soothes us down the highway toward the mountains. Once free of urban and suburban snarl, we begin to ascend, as does the sun. She paints the sky above the Denver skyline with a mess of molten colors. My Dan refuses to look out at the sunrise, however, as there is no guardrail between the edge of the road and the steep, rocky plunge into the dark that gapes between us and the glittering horizon. Heights... aren't his thing. Salem keeps us safely on the road with a white-knuckled grip on the helm.

When we finally get out of the car at the Summit Lake parking lot, it's something like 06:30 and it is cold. The wind is not our friend today, and bites into us mercilessly. I pull on a down skirt, two layers of gloves, a wool pullover, and a fleece vest. I am glad that I put on leg warmers underneath my hiking pants before we left. I wrap my face as well as I can in my vintage Hufflepuff scarf (badgers repreSENT!). We all get out to go pee and then huddle back in the car to warm up one last time before beginning today's journey. Our goal: to summit Mt. Evans, Salem and my first 14er, and Dan's second.

My Dan, my Salem, and I pose before we begin our climb, bundled up and enjoying a last little bit of warmth in the car.

The wind is cruel to us, flinging sharp shards of cold into our exposed skin with every gust. Dan curses at her, which I'm sure only fuels her onslaught. I am instantly lightheaded, what with my low blood pressure and being unaccustomed to this higher altitude. I move very slowly along the path, focused much more on not stumbling or fainting than on moving quickly. Dan powers on ahead until he finds rocks to shelter from the wind behind and wait for me. Salem starts out ahead of me, waiting from time to time for me to catch up, but halfway through our journey becomes concerned and sticks right behind me, lest I faint and fall. My vision does narrow and swim from time to time, but I don't ever actually black out, thankfully. I move at the pace I need to move at: I am a sloth in real life, and I feel no need to apologize for it.

The first part of the ascent is fairly steep, followed by a longer, flatter bit where we are more exposed to the angry wind. Dan complains heartily about the cold and the wind, but presses on nonetheless. I am pretty sure that my right ear has frozen and fallen off somewhere in the scree. Toward the end of this section, Salem photobombs another group's midway-point picture before we take our own. It's kind of great. The photographer jokes that that's definitely the one to add to the family photo album, and Salem and I reflect on how photobombing has become harmless in the days of digital media, where one isn't wasting physical film on unwanted shots.

We take our own photo vaguely at the halfway point. My Dan is wearing a hat that reminds me of a peanut. There is fresh snow on the ground behind us.

At some point after this we pass over a mystical threshold into the final part of the journey. Though I can't quite feel my fingers anymore, the warmth from the sun is enough to keep me going.

I pass, in silhouette, through an arcane doorway flanked by two large cairns.

The last part of the hike involves quite a bit of scrambling up tumbled rocks and boulders, often on all fours. It is difficult to pick out the correct path--it is the choose-your-own-adventure section of the hike. We pick our way up the slope to the next cairn, and then to the next cairn after that, and so on. There are sections where Dan, with his fear of heights, hesitates, pulling in deep breaths to steady himself. But he presses on, and I am proud of him. At some point I end up high on a ridge above the trail, and the views are spectacular already. Salem implores me to stay away from steep drops in my lightheaded state. He is being prudent and smart. But, for some reason, all I want to do is stare down into the valley and lean gently into the wind. Perhaps in another life I was equipped with wings--this could explain my lack of fear, dizzy as I am looking down at the curves and rimples of the landscape spread out below us. Some deep part of me is ready to take to the burgeoning sky.

After quite a bit of scrambling, meandering from cairn to cairn, we turn a corner or crest a rise (or perhaps both?) and can see the closed summit road in the distance--the highest paved road in North America. Which means, of course, that the summit is very close. From here it is just a few more switchbacks to the top. The wind has died down quite a bit by now, overpowered by the strengthening sun. I can feel my face again. I become invigorated by the closeness of our goal, and feel almost buoyant during the final stretch. We join a small crowd lounging at the summit when we reach our final altitude.

Salem takes a picture of me with Summit Lake in the background. Mountains tumble and tarry under a white-blue swath of sky, complicating the steadfast horizon.

There are two U.S. Geological Survey summit markers at the top, but only one is legible. I lay down next to it and my companions join me for a photo op.

Not that you can read the little bronze medallion in this photo anyway.

The bronze marker displays a slightly different elevation (~7 ft of discrepancy, iirc) from the handmade sign that we have brought with us, because when you google the elevation of Mt. Evans you get, like, three different results. Oh well. Our sign is smeared with pink and green glitter, and therefore it is objectively better than any other sign. Several groups ask to borrow it for their own photos, actually, after we take our own. This warms my heart. Let the people have glitter~

Our sign says that Mt. Evans is 14,265 ft high. This is close enough. In this picture Dan looks taller than Salem for some reason, even though Salem has 6 inches on him.

And, because our sign has a slightly higher elevation thereupon than the summit marker, I feel a need to hold it aloft and get a more accurate photo. I also want to be as high up on the summit I can be.

I look unreasonably cute as I hold our glittery sign aloft to celebrate our victory. Dan stares off into the distance, too cool for school in his fancy sunglasses and peanut hat.

All that's left at this point is the descent. But before we go down all that far, however, we realize that we are being watched...

A nanny mountain goat stares dispassionately at us from the rocks above.

And that this mysterious sentry is not alone.

She is accompanied by her adorable kid, who never strays far from her side.

We keep a respectful distance from them as we plan our descent. Rather than scramble down the same way we came, subjecting ourselves to the danger of losing our footing on unstable ground and revisiting the spots that gave Dan pause on the way up, we decide to take the summit road down. It's a longer path (four miles vs. three, iirc), but a stable and gentle descent. And it's closed to traffic at this time of year, meaning we'd only be sharing it with cyclists and other hikers.

It turns out to be incredibly tedious. The views and the landscape are phenomenal, at least. Half-frozen streams meander through the marshy tundra as the road switchbacks and switchbacks and switchbacks again. I feel like I'm part of the world in a new way, a way that I wasn't before. A few cyclists pass us, tearing up the mountain way too fast for having come so far already, and I shout encouragement at them when they do. My joints and muscles begin to ache and burn: my biceps (for some reason), my knees, my hip flexors, my calves, the stabilizing muscles around my ankles. At some point a man passes us on an electric scooter, and he rings his bell as he passes and we burst out laughing at the absurdity of it.

We're quieter overall, though, as a group, on the way down than we were on the way up--exhausted, contemplative. The wind is in a fickle mood and whips at us for a while before dying down, gathering her strength, starting again, changing her mind, and continuing on in this vein for the rest of the descent.

I shelter from the wind behind Dan as we wait at a bend in the road for Salem to catch up. The mountains and the horizon and the sky in the distance play a rhapsody in blue.

Salem's knee begins to act up, and his limp becomes more pronounced the further down we go. Tedium unites us. But as we turn the final corner and begin a direct approach to the parking lot, I become mysteriously full of energy, and feel the need to sing the random songs that come into my head. At some point I take Salem's pack from him and carry it in his stead, to take some pressure off his knee.

And then we are in the car and we are driving home and we did it guys, we did it. We climbed Mt. Evans, and no one got hurt (unless you count Salem's knee), and no one got frostbitten, and no one got struck by lightning, and no one got headbutted off a cliff by a mountain goat. And now Dan grips the seat and cringes and Salem focuses his attention solely on the road ahead and talks about anything other than the terrifying cliffside road on the way back, the one that is now fully lit and we're on the outside edge of, and I hold Dan's hand and stare down into the valley and smile and eat the rest of my trail mix, and it turns out that we don't drive off a cliff either, and that is a victory in itself too.

There's only one thing left to do: celebrate our victory with some cider. We head to the Stem Cidery in the Riverside North district of Denver and each order a flight of delightful ciders and people-watch and chat and feel accomplished and sore and thoroughly--at least on my part--happy.

Dan contemplates what adjectives to use to describe each cider in his flight on the Untapped app while I shoot a sarcastic look at Salem for some reason.

And that's that, y'all.