My Maxwell Minute A Blog by Max Peterson

Senior Trip: Hiking in Colorado – Day 3

Waking up at 4:00 A.M. was not so much fun.  It had just rained right before we woke up, and it was still dark out.  Some of us (Robbie, Andrew, and I) did not sleep well at all.  We started eating breakfast and it soon became apparent that Robbie was not feeling so well.  He barely slept at all and was having all the symptoms of AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) or "Altitude Sickness."  It got so bad that he was feeling very dizzy and could not walk straight.  Dylan decided he would take him down immediately because the best way to fix AMS is getting out of the high elevation.  Fortunately for Dylan, Noah had climbed Mount Elbert before and offered to take him down so Dylan could still summit.  The plan was for Robbie and Noah to go back down to the car and drive to the campsite on the other side of the mountain that we were planning to stay at after we hiked over the mountain.  So we would hike the mountain and meet them there on the other side.  Because of this (and the fact that Robbie could not carry much at this point) we had to carry many things that Robbie had, such as the 4-person tent, lots of food, etc.  The remaining 5 of us probably added about 5-10 pounds more to each of our packs.

Hiking up the mountain is the single hardest and most physically strenuous thing I have ever done in my life.  I have been canoing in Canada twice, which sometimes involved carrying a 90-pound canoe on my shoulders through a "trail" for as long as 1-2 miles to the next lake.  Climbing Mount Elbert was harder than any of those portages combined.  We started at about 11,500 feet and the summit is 14,433 feet.  At first we were the only people on the mountain.  The journey looked challenging, but not too harsh as we could see the summit up ahead (or so we thought).  We took breaks often to catch our breath and drink water.  Every time I turned around, the new view took my breath away.  Such an amazing view!  It took a lot of energy and determination to get to what we thought was the summit.  Each of us had about a 60+ pound pack on. But as we rounded the "summit" we found that it was a false summit and the next high point was even farther.  We were not even halfway there (from tree-line to top).  This false summit thing happened at least 2 more times, maybe 3.  As we climbed it became noticeably harder to catch our breaths, and we had to take even more breaks.  Dylan took on some more of T's weight, it became very much of a team effort to succeed.

Skip ahead to about 14,200 feet with only a couple hundred left.  David had gone ahead and reached the top.  T was having a hard time making progress, and my headache was getting almost unbearable.  I took two ibuprofens and ate some gorp.  We rested for awhile without much recovery progress.  Then Dylan said we should turn back, as it was becoming unsafe for most of us to continue.  After hearing that, I felt a horrible feeling.  Will I have hiked all this way, to fall short a few hundred feet?  Absolutely not.  I got up and somehow found a second wind.  Within 10 minutes I joined David.  Such a happy feeling that was!  T, Dylan, and Andrew decided to summit but leave the packs behind.  This means that we had to go down the same way we came up.  A small sacrifice for a large reward of summiting.  I was able to call my parents from the summit, somehow there was cell phone signal.  There we were.  5 Iowa boys coming out hiking for the first time in most of their lives, and summiting Mount Elbert, the second highest peak in the contiguous 48 states.  What an accomplishment!

Standing at the summit. We did it!

Then came the descent.  It was easier, but still taxing on the legs.  As I was going down, I kept thinking, "Woah, we actually just climbed THAT far?!"  I honestly couldn't believe it and I still don't know how we did it with 60 pounds on each of our backs.  The descent took about half the time as the climb.  We had to go all the way down to the car at 10,000 feet and then drive to the campsite where Robbie and Noah were.  We were all extremely relieved and exhausted upon arriving at the car.  A short drive later and we were at the campsite (around 2:00PM).

It was a regular car/RV campground with a friendly campground host.  Cost was $15 for the night.  We got the tents setup and most of us took a short nap.  It started raining at 4:30 and didn't stop until around 8:30.  We hung out in the car during most of that, and ate spaghetti with pesto sauce (tasted just like Spaghetti Works in Des Moines!).  After dinner we found out that the four person tent was sitting in a pool of water, so we slept in the car.

I've got a lot more pictures to upload and post, but the Internet connection through my phone is too slow.  I will post them later.

Max