When climbing mountains in Colorado, be sure to start early enough to make it to the top by noon. Or so they say. The motivation here is that right around noon is when the clouds form at the top of mountains, and usually it rains and lightnings a bit - generally less than optimal weather to be hiking in.
Enter my family: my dad, two sisters (Kati and Shari), and myself. Two days before, we got it into our heads that we should climb a mountain while I was back from college, and somehow decided on Mount Elbert,
the highest mountain in Colorado (third highest on this continent). It seemed pretty reasonable at the time - looking at some info online revealed that it should be an easier hike than Pike's Peak, which I had hiked twice before (once up Barr trail, and once up the back). Super.
I got up at 4, after a decent night's sleep, and got ready. We were supposed to leave at 5, but ended up missing that by 45 minutes or so. The drive was supposed to take about 3 hours, so we were planning on getting there and starting the hike at 8. Then we stopped at the Donut Mill for a while on the way, and got 'lost' for a little bit (because there are two trails up Mt. Elbert, and there was some discussion over which one we wanted). Suffice it to say, we didn't start actually hiking until 10:25 :). Yeah yeah, but it's a nice sunny day and all, and the hike isn't actually that long, right...?
So we start hiking. First hundred feet or so.... ok, not so bad.
Just enough to tempt you to continue. After than it was more like climbing miles and miles of stairs, but without the stairs. To illustrate, here's my ASCII art rendition of Mount Elbert:
Seriously: steep nasty. I know what you're thinking... "Of course that looks steep, because / and \ are really the only characters you can use to draw a hill!" I suppose that's true... lets just say it was a lot closer to a / than a _ .
After two hours or so, we broke the tree line, which was at 12,000 feet. Part of the printout we brought (with directions and stuff) mentioned, regarding this part of the hike "It is at this point you will get your first nice glimpse of a false summit on the horizon. At this point, we would like to recommend that you begin to continually remind yourself about how much fun you are having. You still have over two miles and about 2,500 feet of elevation gain to go!"
(pics - my dad, me, and a really fat marmot)
Yeah... good advice. I'm not sure how to fully describe the difficulty of those last two miles - any words I write would just be an understatement. We'd climb up 200 feet, then stop for a minute, then climb 200 more... stop again...etc... Some three grueling hours later, we made it to the top. It was 2:45 and we were at 14,433 feet. I was pretty happy to have made it, and the view was amazing. All around us were huge snow covered mountains, but the cool thing is: they were all below us. ;)
(pics - some mountains around us; my dad and me; the gps, showing 14.5 k feet)
We got a few pictures, but didn't have time for too many, because of what happened next. The clouds had been gathering for some time now, as you can see in the pictures. At first it started to snow, which was kinda cool, given that this is the middle of June. We got a few more pictures and agreed that it would be best to head down soon, so we wouldn't be caught in a blizzard at the top of the mountain. I started packing up my stuff, when I heard this buzzing sound. I didn't really know what it was - it sounded like a beetle or something, but I didn't pay much attention. Then it started buzzing louder, and it sounded like it was in my hair. I tried brushing it out of my hair, but the buzzing continued. It was then that I noticed my sister doing the same thing, and saying something like "What's with all this static electricity?" I think all four of us simultaneously thought/said "OH CRAP! LIGHTNING!" Well gee, that makes sense: it's snowing, we're in the middle of the clouds that the snow is coming from, and we're at the highest point for thousands of miles around... well NOW I see why Mr. Lightning might have taken a fancy to our little locale.
We grabbed our stuff and started running down the mountain... That annoying buzzing sound on my head, which I now realized was a bunch of sparks, got louder and started hurting... though if I ran with my hand on my head, it made it stop sparking. Side note: running and jumping over rocks in a snowstorm to avoid being struck by lightning is more interesting if you have your hand on your head.
Probably a half mile later we were clearly off the peak, and felt a bit safer. The wind and snow had died down as a result of the lower elevation, and we rested for a bit. It only took us two hours to get down, partly because it was downhill and partly because our adrenaline had kindly invited itself to our little party.
So: Next time you go hiking, be sure to start early, and if you plan on using a metal walking stick, you'll probably want to abandon it a few hundred feet from the top :)
