Senior Trip: Road Trip Through Colorado – Day 8
Wow, day 8. It has been a whole week on the road, with six of us, and we are surviving without any major problems. Of course, there are arguments every now and then, but we expected that. Overall I am extremely impressed with how well the trip has gone so far. It has been a lot of fun. That being said, we decided to cut the trip a day short. Instead of staying in Fort Collins for two days and driving back to Iowa on Thursday, we are leaving on Wednesday. This decision was reached because we got to Fort Collins a day early, and most of the group was ready to be done. Not because we weren't having fun, it's just that 8 days makes for quite a long trip.
Dylan wanted to hang out with his friends for a while before we left, so he went and did that while the rest of us went to "Fort Fun" to play a round of mini golf. Cool part about that was, it was just our luck that it was "$2.00 Tuesday" so instead of paying $6.50 for a round, we only had to pay two. It was the collective goal of the group to beat T. A close game ensued, but T pulled away at the end to beat David. Andrew third, then me and Robbie. Finishing mini golf, we went tubing down the Cache La Pudre River. We already had the tubes and wanted to get some more use out of them. By the time we were down with that it was time to go to the Pearson's, where we were staying, and take a shower.
Noah Pearson is the friend of Dylan's who originally came with us on Day 2 to hike Mount Elbert. We stayed at his house, but him and his dad were away at orientation in Montana. Instead we got to meet Mrs. Pearson and Seth, Noah's younger brother by 2 years. Mrs. Pearson (Rebbecca) was incredibly friendly. She welcomed us all, and exclaimed how happy she was to have visitors. She cooked us ravioli with pesto and marinara sauces, served with a home garden grown salad. She even ate with us and got to know each of us and our future plans.
Following dinner with Rebbecca and Seth, we all rode bikes with Seth to Walrus Ice Cream Shop. As a single small business with their own homemade ice cream recipes, it was very good! Much better than any Dairy Queen soft serve, and I would say even better than Coldstone (and certainly cheaper!).
By this time it was dark and we were ready for bed, to prepare for the long drive the following day.
**Interesting note: while at the Pearson's we checked out Fort Collin's Newspaper, "The Coloradoan". There was an article about Money Magazine's top ten cities for 2010. Fort Collins was #6, and Ames was #9.
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
Senior Trip: Hiking in Colorado- The Intro
I've been lucky to have a pretty solid group of friends, most of whom I've known since elementary school. This spring we all (finally) graduated from high school. You know what that means? Time for a roadtrip with bros! A "broadtrip?"
Several ideas were thrown around as to where we wanted to go, but when Dylan mentioned hiking in Colorado, it was almost as if the decision was made. Dylan is from Fort Collins, Colorado, and he didn't move to Ames until the beginning of our freshmen year in high school. He has been hiking many times in Colorado and was really excited to start writing up our itinerary. After the plan was written up, 7 of us were "down" for going. One would drop out later to bring the number to 6 bros.
We embark on our journey on the Tuesday of July 6th at 4:30 A.M. We will drive 11 hours straight until we arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado. The following day we will be leaving for Leadville, Colorado where we will begin our 6-night backpacking/hiking trip. We will climb two mountains over 14,000 feet: Mount Elbert and Mount Massive.
I am planning on writing daily blog updates each night. They may not be posted until I get back to civilization, but they will still be separated by days. Unfortunately this is all the time I have for now to explain because I need to get some sleep... we are leaving in 5.5 hours. I encourage you to Google those mountains if you are curious. I would have provided links but I don't have time.
Stay Tuned!
Max