I get up to the trail usually the night before. It is usually a 6 to 9 hour drive. I’ve done this 6 times now and will be doing it again this weekend. My preparation begins a couple of weeks in advance when I start to visualize the trail, the look of the mountain, youtube videos of people doing it, the routes as described on 14ers.com, the pictures with blue, green, magenta, and yellowish brown lines that show the routes on topo maps on the site. the pictures at various points on the mountain with lines indicating the path. As I drift off to sleep while listening to music my head is consumed by all the images. As I review the pictures and snippets of video in my head I begin to convince myself I can do this.
The Monday prior to the climb I start looking at the weather reports from the national weather service for the geographical coordinates for the actual peak. What I am looking for is a mostly sunny day with a low probability of stormy weather in the afternoon. I look at the days preceding the climb day and the day after. What I want to see is if there is bad weather I want to see it tapering of as the day draws near and I want to see good conditions for the night when I am leaving the mountain and good conditions the next day. The conditions before and after don’t have to all that good it is just the trending I am concerned about. A 60 percent chance of t-showers on the climb day means I am staying at home.
So if the conditions are favorable, I’ve down loaded the kml file and the concerned topographical maps of the region into “backcountry pro” on my phone, I gather all my gear and get ready for the trip. I pace my eating so that I don’t have to do a number 2 on the mountain. I can’t stand that. However, I do bring toilet paper and I am sorry but I am not packing out my excrement. I will dig a hole and bury it as deep as I can. According to the leave no trace rule packing out excrement is a must. This means I don’t eat much the day before until I get to the trail head. I usually make a big pot of spaghetti with sauce and Italian sausage during the week to take up with me.
In my pack I have the following, hat, extra jacket, at least 2.5 litres of water, cliff bars, compass, knife, bear bells, extra socks, bivy bag, extra contact lenses, a big ass battery for my phone, a pill bottle with excedrin and ibuprofen, and a head lamp. One time I took one of those 5 hour energy things. I think it actually helped. I also have hiking poles and climbing gloves. My cloths are wool socks, synthetic long underwear, synthetic regular underwear, synthetic t-shirt, synthetic turtle neck shirt, quick drying and wicking hiking pants, sunglasses, and a helmet. I also take a go pro camera and a sony video camera and my phone. When I drive up I am usually in shorts, tennis shoes, and a tee shirt. Oh yes, I also have good hiking boots with very “grabby” tread. In addition, in the car is extra water, crampons, an ice axe, sleeping bag, blankets and sometimes I take a couple of pillows and maybe an article of Wendy’s clothing. And last but not least I take a shit load of butterflies in my stomach. These do not leave until I am about a quarter of mile into the hike.
It’s usually on a Friday morning I get up, load up the car, turn it on, release parking break, put my foot on the break, and take the car out of neutral and put it into drive. I release the break and all four wheels on the 2005 Forerunner begin to rotate. As the wheels rotate through the first couple of degrees I think, “Holy shit, I am really going to do this.”
When I was in my twenties, I would decide to climb a 14er on some weekend. I might decide to do it on say the previous Thursday. On Saturday morning I would wake up and if it was sunny and for the five times I did it, it was sunny. I lucked out really. I would put on jeans and a t-shirt some cotton socks and bring along a “hoody” just in case. I would get up fairly early and head on up to say Mt Bierstadt, park the car at the trail head, get out and start walking. Now I would take a back pack with some food in it. Water was hit or miss. I don’t really remember taking water. This is how I would begin to climb. Essential I would climb on a whim with basically no advance preparation.
This is also how I began my climb, a different kind of climb, the climb of my life, on November 21st of 2005. The climb started the last 15 minutes of November 21st. Metaphorically speaking, okay writing, this would be when I would get out of the car put my feet on the ground and take the first step wearing just a pair of shorts, socks, tennis shoes, and a t-shirt. Once again, metaphorically I was beginning a climb up a fourteen thousand foot mountain requiring advanced climbing skills just shy of technical rope climbing sometimes called class 4 hiking/climbing. I was starting it in the dark and I had no idea I was starting out on this journey. If you were to actually start a climb like this the chances of survival while not totally suicidal are at best slim. I am still alive and sober.
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