I headed out to Colorado to escape Philadelphia. I was going through a breakup with a guy I ran (literally) in the same circles with and needed to escape. I craved mountains to train on and a change of scenery where I could go anywhere and not know a single person. I called up a good friend I hadn’t seen in awhile that lived in Denver and was on a plane the next week.
Denver and Colorado are such amazing places and I hate that I live so far. One of the coolest experiences I had was bagging two 14ers (mountains over 14,000 feet in elevation) in one day.
The plan was originally to summit Mt Bierstadt and head home - literally. My flight was that evening. On the way up I noticed some people that had on some Philly-ish style clothes: shirts from local soccer team and a college nearby. We became fast friends and finished the summit together. At the top they mentioned they were planning on traversing the sawtooth ridge to reach the neighboring summit of Mt Evans. This was going to be a challenging endeavor and one I was very interested in but originally written off since I was alone. I immediately agreed to tag along!
We started making our way down the scree field and realized this was going to be as difficult as we imagined. The way down was pretty steep so we reverted to crab walking our way down which seemed the safest bet.
The entire sawtooth ridge was about three miles long and treacherous just about the entire way. Class 3 scrambling with some very scary drop offs had us taking our time. Being afraid of heights, I was terrified for almost the entire time and was so thankful for my new friends that supported me. I remember after one particularly steep section with a trail about a two feet wide, there was a rock. My legs felt like spaghetti and were trembling. I’ve never been so scared. My friend said as soon as you find a safe rock, just hug it. I couldn’t have hugged that rock soon enough and cried.
We still had about another mile to go after this and I was more than ready for this adventure to be over with. Not because it wasn’t fun or the views were boring but because I was so scared. We slowly made it up to where we were “safe” and eventually to the summit. This is also one of the highest mountain summits you can drive to so while we were exhausted, hungry and tired, hoards of tourists exited the tour buses to make the hundred foot walk to the summit and we couldn’t help but laugh.
Not originally planning on summitting both mountains, we were on a very late schedule. A plan like this is usually finished by the time we summited due to the afternoon lighting storms. Our descent was going to be during the peak time but we had no choice. Especially me; I had a plane to catch!
We made our way down and could hear rumbling in the distance. The storm would arrive soon and we needed to make it down as quickly as possible. After a few more minutes, a storm cloud was visible and we could see the lightning strikes. We hiked as fast as possible. One strike and we would be in serious trouble.
Luck was on our side that day and we made it through the storms unscathed. My friends were moving a bit slower than I and they knew I had a flight so they gave me their blessing to take off on my own so I can run the rest of the way down. I was nervous since I didn’t know the route and my food and water was running extremely low. I do not recommend my actions this day. I was lucky and I realize that.
I ran down the trail trying my best to stay the course since it wasn’t well marked. The storms that rolled through made certain sections of the trail muddy, sloppy messes. I tried to get around the bogs as best I could, swatting bugs out of my face along the way. I approached a bog about several feet wide and who knows how deep. I stepped gingerly up on ledges and branches trying to get around it. I grabbed a branch from a bush for balance and it snapped. I ended up in the mud bog and it turns out, it fortunately wasn’t that deep. It was, however, very muddy. I screamed in frustration and tried to pull myself together. The clock was ticking.
I kept running and running and landmarks started looking more familiar. A few more minutes and I saw it... the parking lot! About a mile to go and I’d be at my car. I made it with about thirty minutes to spare. If I stuck with my friends, I would have missed my flight for sure. I hightailed it out of there, back to my friend’s house to grab my luggage and a quick shower from my earlier mud bath and it was off to the airport.
It was such a long day but absolutely incredible. On the way up my new friends had said they couldn’t believe I was taking on a feat like this only after being in the state a few days. I cannot wait for the opportunity to tackle another!
Wow, what an endeavour @raelynnbianca . Good for you to do that in one day. Glad you made it okay and caught your flight. Thank you for this well written post :)
thanks @robertandrew! It was a wild day!
Amazing how you managed to do two summits in one day and catch your flight in time. With some of the terrains being quite difficult and resulted in you crab styling it. We can also see the funny side of the tour buses coming along a few hundred metres before the summit and letting out those tourists to take a quick snap saying that they made it to the top. The true troopers were you guys! Five highs all around!
Thanks guys! After all we went through I still would’ve chosen to climb how we did instead of taking the bus!
That photo of the distant storm is awesome... Being up on the mountain taking the pic gives such a neat-o perspective of it.
I figured I’d snap a shot in case it killed me.
Well done :)
Thanks @travelmarcus!