First Fourteener*--Mileage to Date 829

I have a new found respect for those that have climbed some big stuff...Diego I am thinking of you.

In my quest to do some other things while on sabbatical I decided to try my first Fourteener--one of 54 fourteen thousand foot peaks in Colorado. While in Breckenridge I planned to hike Quandary Peak (http://14ers.com/photos/peakmain.php?peak=Quandary+Peak) and the trailhead was about 6 miles from the house.

Now my sister Macey, with multiple 14ers under her belt, said you need to get started early to factor in the time of the hike and try to be done and headed down early so as to avoid potential bad weather rolling in during the afternoon. So................in this case I opted to get a start during mid-morning because the hike to the summit is about 3.5 hours. When I started it was warm and sunny and I was wearing a base layer, fleece, shorts, and had my camelbak with a raincoat and gloves.

A view of the trail

The hike started out easy at about 10K and was a steady climb on a well-traveled trail. I was actually working up a sweat and moving pretty well. I was checking my GPS regularly to gauge altitude and when nearing 11K I was beginning to labor a bit and every 10-15 minutes I was taking a break.

The goal for the day

Snow on the trail

At about 11,700' I stopped on the trail to catch my breath and when I look up I see the below Mountain sauntering his way down the trail. He could care less that I was on the trail and was just going his own way. A few minutes later he walked off the trail and stopped next to another goat laying in the sun.

Yielding the right of way!

 

Climbing like a Mountain Goat--they were 15' away

After the encounter with the goats I continued heading up and I could see some weather rolling in on the horizon and the winds were picking up and whether or not I would make it to the summit was crossing my mind.

Weather on the horizon

The hike continued upward and I passed about two dozen hikers heading down and when I was about 12K I could see the weather beginning to build. As I crested 13,500' I began to doubt if I would make it to the summit but kept moving forward.

The last part of the hike I joined up with Sam from Nashville, TN who had not planned to go to the summit but once he began the hike and was getting close to the top he decided to keep going. Sam and I chatted a bit as we saw the clouds come in. We were very close to the top and decided to hike a bit longer.

Sam, an avid outdoorsman and hapkido practitioner, was watching the weather closely and when we were about 150' of elevation and maybe 20 min of hiking left he said "this is not worth it and I just saw lightening a few miles off. The winds were really picking up and we could see a thunderstorm a few miles off so we headed back.

Well...................I checked my GPS and it had us at about 14,100' and after we walked for about 5 min the storm rolled over us and we were hit with hail and high winds. The hail was like bee stings on my legs so the two us huddled behind a rock and I pulled out my rain coat. We remained here for about 10 minutes and the storm had blown over us. We decided to keep moving down and with high winds and another storm coming we were very efficient in our movement.

Just before the second storm hit

After moving down about 1000' the second storm came in and it started to pour with more lightening. Being caught in the open and above the tree line with lightening is very dangerous so we moved with a purpose to get down lower and into the trees.

Sam from Nashville

Once in the trees Sam and I had a great conversation about many things that ranged from politics, the military (his son is in the US Army), hunting, wild animals and what to do if you encounter them, and about Tennessee and his career as an attorney.

Other Moment: Even though we did not make it to the summit we did get above 14K--an asterisk-- and had an interesting adventure as we were able to encounter high Colorado weather up close and personal. I now have even more appreciation for some of my friends that have gone to much higher altitude where the risks are even greater.