The Woodsy-What-Not Strikes Again

I must have forgotten that eating peanut butter and jelly every single day was so bad because just a mere two weeks after getting out of the wilderness, I was headed back to try the woodsy what-not thing once again. This time to Colorado. *insert the happy dance*-About Colorado, not peanut butter & jelly.

This time, I was going with about 7 girls from STEP Advanced. We met in Dallas & drove a van to CO, stopping overnight in New Mexico. Now, if you’ve ever been to northwest Texas, you know how boring it is to drive through. “Look…flatness! And scrub brush!” An hour later: “Yay! More scrub brush!  Whoa…was that a …hill?!?” A two foot hill, maybe, but a hill nonetheless. Although, I shouldn’t be so hard on northwest Texas, because every now & then you drive through an exciting town. Ya know, it might even have a population of seven.

Colorado on the other hand had me kicking myself that I didn’t have Samson. He would have absolutely loved the roads & scenery. For a while, we paralleled the Arkansas River, and got to watch all the white-water rafters with their “Oh my God, I’m going to die!!!!!” faces on. We finally reached Salida, CO & obtained maps of the area & discovered there was a burn ban. Gas stoves come in handy.

We found a place to camp for the first night & of course, no sooner did we get there & get the gear out, it started raining. A couple tents went up in no time flat & we waited it out. It didn’t last long. We got out food to eat & had a solemn funeral service for the spilled Gatorade powder. Actually, we didn’t, but I tried to salvage it with more or less success.

The next day, we packed up & drove to a trailhead, so we could backpack in to find a good place to stay for a few days. This was when I figured out that altitude really does mean less oxygen, and less oxygen means harder to breath, and harder to breathe means harder to hike. At one point a concerned individual in better shape than I asked how I was doing. “*gasp* I’m *puff* fine *wheeze* really.” We all know that fine stands for Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional, right? Ok, yep, I’m fine. Really.

We hiked to a nice, clear stream & found a secluded spot to set up camp. After doing my best efforts to clear a spot for the tent, the evil ground sprouted stones that grew into rocks by the time I went to bed. By morning, they had matured into gigantic, lumpy boulders right under my back. I moved the tent & dug them out, but by that time, they had magically shrunk back into little stones. Deceptive little buggers, let me tell you.

As mentioned before, we were camping right next to a stream. It was clear, cold, and rather harmless looking. A couple of us reasoned that there was nothing upstream but acres of CO forest, so we drank it straight instead of purifying it. Most the others scrutinized us closely for 24 hours, and after seeing that we didn’t die, or keel over from random sickness, they too decided that it was safe to drink. I guess I could have been a cup-bearer in ages past. So exciting. Note: After researching water-borne illnesses later, we discovered that there are usually no symptoms for seven to ten days after. Oh well. We are all still alive as far as I know. Well, I know I am. Yep, I’m FINE.

Anyways…we hung out for a few days and took day hikes, and generally did as we pleased. On the fourth of July, we hiked a couple miles to a place where we could get a good view of the town & watched a couple good firework displays. It was really something to see. We hiked back, actually, they hiked, I mostly stumbled back in the dark. I might have tripped a few times & hit my shins on a few logs, but I made it. Maybe next time I will bring my flashlight. Just maybe.

After spending some time we packed up camp & drove/hiked to another spot, this one being close to the Mt. Elbert trailhead. This was a very exciting place to camp, first of all because there wasn’t a flat spot to be seen. We picked the flattest spot we could find, but like the stones growing, the ground would gradually tilt in the night until it was completely vertical, and I was smashed up against the side of the tent. But, of course, by morning it had returned to a gentle slope. It was a very interesting phenomenon. It was also exciting because every afternoon, the clouds would roll off Mt. Elbert & we would get rain. Oh, did I mention, I wasn’t sleeping in my leaky tent! No, I was sleeping in a different, albeit just as leaky tent. And, of course, we also got hail. Hail. On our tent. Fun. Not.

Oh, and we tried to hang our food in a bag somewhere out of reach of bears, but the only place to hang it was directly above our tent. The brilliance of some people. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too.

Believe it or not, the trip was neither lame nor completely miserable. Mt. Elbert was the real reason for the Colorado trip. At 14,400 feet, Mt Elbert is the highest peak in the Rockies, second highest in the lower 48. It was my first 14er, actually, my first real mountain. In order to hike up & back safely, you have to start at about 2:00 in the morning, so you can be off the summit by the time the storms roll in. On the day that the group hiked it, I had a plainly miserable night & didn’t sleep at all. When they went to wake me, all that happened was a groggy voice: “Yeah, ya know, it hasn’t been a good night, I’m not going.” *Thinks to self: “I’ll solo hike it another day.”* Which I did. Except, it wasn’t a solo hike, Megan came with despite having just done it two days before. She’s a beast, that’s all I’m going to say about that.

We got up at 1:30, packed food & warm clothes & headed out. With this being her second time and my lungs going, “AHHH!!! That’s it!! We’re done! Strike for higher wages!!,”  I decided to take it easy. Despite “taking it easy” we summitted in 4 hours. Once the sun came up, we were well above the tree line, and the view was absolutely breathtaking. Talk about a mountaintop experience! I was definitely high on the awesomeness of it all. I kept stopping to take pictures of the scenery & alpine flowers, but the higher we got, the colder and windier it got, so we had to keep moving. By the way, that rocky thing that looks like the summit…well it’s only there to fool you. Once you get there and your legs are trying to tell you that they are never going to do anything for you again, you see the other rocky thing that is still not the summit. Yeah, you get the point.  

By the way, it was the first time I saw snow in July, and I kept thinking about working outside in the dead of summer when I was a kid & just wishing for a bucket of snow. Yeah, well this July I was freezing my butt off.

We were the first to summit, just ahead of a couple who got there while we were there. I took pictures between clouds, marveled at the view & exchanged Jolly Ranchers for a jack card in the in the geo cache box. It didn’t take long to pretty much completely freeze my butt off, so we headed back down. Actually, since I was freezing, it was closer to a jog, with my legs feeling rather like gummy worms.  Megan cursed me the whole way down, I think it had something to do with the length of my legs. As we descended, we passed tons of hikers on their way up who were all impressed that we were already on our way down. Like Bill Engvall would say, “I was finally cool for once in my life.” It got a lot warmer and I’m pretty sure I was still high, and possibly a little loopy.

About the time my legs decided they wanted a divorce, we reached camp, and after celebrating for half a minute, I crawled into the tent & proceeded to appear rather dead for a few hours. Then, I received a sudden burst of energy when I realized the others had gone to see a beaver dam & if I wanted to see it, I should go find them. The energy only really happened in the brain, though & did not transfer to the rest of the body. I swear it was the slowest hike of my life; I must have looked ridiculous ambling down the trail like a zombie. I found Megan & Whitney, and we went in search of the others. The only problem was, I understood that if I walked down the dam trail there would be a beaver dam in about half a mile. There was no beaver dam in half a mile, however there were about six dams three miles down the dam trail, with no familiar humans to be found. Right before my legs decided to run off without me, I discovered people I knew, and watched Helen swim in the dam water. It looked cold. Not like I’ve never jumped in cold water before.

We finally decided to head back, seeing as we had three miles to go & a herd of turtles stampeding through peanut butter could have made better time than me. Of course, about halfway back, we got caught in the rain & dove under a spruce tree to stay dry, where I promptly fell asleep. To be honest, I don’t remember the rest, but I did end up back at camp, where I proceeded to feel like an 80 year old for the next couple days.

We moved camp to a nice level, non rocky site in a stand of pines. The weather got rather cold at night, but beyond that it was splendid. At one point, I popped out of the tent, actually, I crawled out, I don’t really pop, just in time to see an elk just walking by.

On the day we hiked out it rained. Like, poured rain all day long. I might have been slightly happy to see the van. Just slightly. And I might have been even happier to have all-you-can-eat pizza and tons of ice-cream the next day. After all, withdrawal was getting pretty bad. But really, I was FINE.