To the Summit with a Sling and Bent Wing!
Mt. Elbert has been my nemesis for awhile. It laughs at me and slaps my bottom every now and again, and it was time for me to tame the beast. A strategy team meeting in Denver was the perfect opportunity for me to face off against my old foe, and I had been thinking about it for several weeks. However, I had not anticipated that a diving accident would leave me with a repaired bicep and 9 staples in my arm just 10 days before the man versus mountain showdown.
I thought back through what the doctor had told me I could and could not do, and at no stage did he say “Don’t hike up a mountain.” He did say that I should wear a sling for 14 days…..check….I have one of them in my bag. Plus, the weather is closing in, and this would be my last chance before the snow covered the trail and made walking very difficult.
So it was to be Andy in a sling with a bent wing versus the tallest mountain in Colorado and the tallest mountain in the Rockies (albeit by only 100 feet) and the second tallest mountain in the continental U.S. I can only imagine how pissed off Mt. Massive was when it found out that the grinding of tectonic plates had left it just a little shorter than plain old Mt. Elbert. Mt. Massive and Mt. Elbert have looked at each other over the gap between their knees for….oh a couple million years, but I am sure that Mt. Massive still shudders when the marginally taller shadow of Mt. Elbert falls on him.
With the meeting over, I grabbed myself a rental car and headed to Leadville. I love that town. While booking in at the Alps Motel (click for web site), I spotted a coffee mug on the counter with a for sale sign on it and a piece of card sticking out of it saying ‘I climbed Mt. Elbert.’ I picked it up, and it had a picture of Mt. Elbert from some miles away – the usual scenic picture on one side and a picture of the view from the top on the other side.
I wanted to buy it then and there, but I am a superstitious kind of guy and did not want to preempt disaster by buying a mug that said ‘I climbed Mt. Elbert’ before I had actually climbed it, so I resisted. It was 8 pm on Wednesday night.
Having neatly laid out all my clothes, equipment and food on the extra bed and having almost decided what I was going to wear in the morning, I set out for dinner at Quincy’s. Quincy’s is a steak place in a rustic building that is over 100 years old. They serve two fixed dishes per night – prime rib and baked sirloin or fillet and baked sirloin. The complete meal with salad, bread, etc. starts at $8.75, and it is really good – best food for the value anywhere. That quick dinner got me back to the hotel a little after 9 pm and after a little fiddle farting with gear, I finally made it into bed.
The 2.45 am alarm came quickly! Not least of all because I have not been sleeping well with the arm injury; I keep rolling over on it and waking myself up. The final packing of the backpack was quick – waterproof outerwear, gloves, extra hat, additional thermal layer, first aid kit, and some limited survival equipment, food and water. However, I still remember my underwear issues on the Mt. Rainier trip, and I was struggling to choose between light outer pants and long underwear or thicker hiking pants and no long underwear.
The fact is that I just have to have something to worry about, and it seems that the working temperature and environment for whatever is inside my hiking pants is more important than my damaged arm. I chose the long underwear and lighter pants. All I did for my stapled wound was to throw a band aid on it.
It was a beautiful cold, clear night but, on stepping out the door, I immediately felt a gust of wind cut through me, and that was not a good omen for the long part of the hike that was above the tree line and completely exposed to the elements. I also had no idea of how much snow was up there on the mountain but was planning to go as far as I could regardless. I did check the weather for any major storms as well, but there were none forecasted – just cold temperatures and a strong wind on the mountain.
It was 30 degrees when I arrived at the trail head. It was there that I had another of those 'should I take it or should I not' moments of classic indecision. I was wearing a lot of gear, and I had all my ‘hard-shell’ outerwear in my bag along with another, larger, thermal layer. I hemmed and hawed and ended up taking that layer out of the back pack, and (because the car was already locked) chose to stuff it in the wheel arch on top of the tire – I will remember that when I come to leave…Right? Right! With that done, I turned on my headlamp and adjusted it to put a small round pool of light just ahead of my boots, put my bad arm in my sling, and was taking my first steps on the trail at 4 am.
Mt. Elbert is 14,433 tall which is actually a little higher than Mt. Rainer, the mountain that I had climbed earlier in the year. The trail head sits at about 10,000 feet, but all the books say that the elevation gain is 4,700 feet over an 8.75 mile round trip – better minds than mine calculated that. The first part of the climb takes you about a mile along the Colorado Trail, zigzagging up through pine trees to the Mt. Elbert North Trail which is pointed out by a nice wooden sign.
I know that I hit the first part of the trail too fast. I feel like I know it and just wanted to get it out of the way, so I stomped my way up the narrow trail, listening to the wind blowing and looking through the trees at the patchwork of bright twinkling stars on the dark, clear background of the night. I was concerned about the amount of snow on the trail as my first attempt at the mountain had been terminated by too much snow. It was now October in Colorado. Of course there was going to be snow! But, will there still be enough trails for me to follow?
I nodded to the Mt. Elbert trail sign as I passed; we are not friends yet, not equals at least. It just stared blankly at me as I went past, but I did do my best Arnold impersonation and thought to myself “I’ll be back.” However, I was now climbing for a more glittering prize – a coffee mug!
Soon after the sign the path turns upwards and continues in that fashion to the end of the tree line at 11,800 feet. Again, I kept pushing through this section listening to my breathing and my heart rate, trying to fix a pace that kept both at manageable rates. I do the same when I am diving to prevent hyperventilation underwater. The most unnerving part was listening to the wind whistling through the tree tops and knowing that in a short while I would be out of the cover of the trees and climbing on the bare face of the mountain.
As I reached the tree line I found myself stopping for breath more than I had thought I would, and as the trees got thinner and the wind came through at ground level, I was feeling cold and was not able to stop for more than 30 seconds to a minute. Right before the end of the trees I stopped, took off my pack and pulled out the ‘hard-shell’ jacket and pants that I had packed along with a hood that had face protection. I put it all on and hunkered down behind a log for a 10 minute break. I hugged my pack to my chest to keep warm and remained ducked down out of the wind. It was still dark, and I was wishing that the sun would come out.
The sun has a special effect on the human mind. Back in the days my sailing mentor Martin and I completed three crossings of the Atlantic in his sail boat, I always remember those early morning watches behind the wheel – cold, wet and tired – just waiting for the sun to rise over the blank ocean. The moment that the sun comes up, it slides into you like a mug of hot cocoa, warming your soul and waking your body. You go from tired, cold and down to warm, awake and positive in the time it takes to climb over the horizon. Those mornings and that feeling was in my mind as I raised myself up from behind the log, stepped out from behind the cover of the trees, and felt the first full blast of the wind on my body. I leaned in and remembered…step, over step, over step.
The next 1,000 feet of elevation is a climb over the tundra, not always very steep, but always up, and the wind was blowing hard and brutally cold. Sometimes a forward step became a sideways or backward step, but I kept plugging on step over step through 12,500 feet. At this point I was starting to feel my legs and lungs; this was not good. I did a lot of training before the Mt. Rainier climb, but a couple of injuries since then had slowed my training, and the combination of the wind and altitude was taking its toll on me, but the orange glow in the east told me that either the sun was rising or the unrest in the middle east had finally dissolved into one huge nuclear holocaust. Thankfully it turned out to be the sun.
At this point I had completely forgotten about the coffee mug, and my mind was making up all sorts of reasons why I could quit and just stop the painful step over step. It seemed like my mind (egged on by my legs and lungs) was locked in a battle with my will power (backed up by my ego), and at this point it was not clear who was going to win!
One thing that I did notice was that the snow accumulates in the trail and then more snow joins it and that results in bare ground all around where the trail should be, but there is a big sheet of snow over the actual trail and surrounding area. That meant that I had to walk beside the trail or look up and find where it peeked out of the snow and head for it there. Walking off the trail meant that you have to walk on loose rocks and that is harder on the balance, especially in the wind. I was walking 10-15 paces, pausing and then taking another 10-15 paces; slow progress and much harder at this point than I had anticipated.
With good light now and the sun powering me, I felt better, however, the reward for making it across the tundra to about 12,800 feet is the specter of the false summit and what looked to me like a near vertical climb up snow and rock. I hid down behind some rocks and took a 15 minute rest while contemplating every aspect of the phrase ‘give up.’ But, when I stood up, I was surprised to see that my feet pointed themselves towards the summit (false in this case) and off we went.
I could tell you how sore my legs were at that point and how out of breath I was or how I was down to 5 paces, pause and 5 paces; I could tell you how badly I wanted to give up, but none of that really matters because, much to my surprise, I made it to the top of that false talus and looked at the real summit! That was the point that I took out my iPhone and turned on the altimeter.
Now that was a smart move. It told me that I was at 13,600 and whether or not an altimeter on an iPhone is accurate or not, it told me that I had a little over 800 feet to go. Why stop now? The climb from the false summit to the actual summit is ‘easier’ than the climb that I had just done, so now I played a game with myself. I picked a rock that I thought was 100 feet above me, climbed there and checked the altimeter.
Now the summit was in reach – I could see the numbers climbing with me, and the distance to the top was getting less and less. I was really no less tired, but the sun and a numerical end point just helped me keep pushing forward. I guess that the most important thing was that I did not check the altitude at a point on the climb where the distance to go would have discouraged me.
Step over step, through snow, over loose rocks next to the trail, sore legs, heaving chest and pounding heart I just kept pushing on upwards, will power over weakness, and step over step. Finally I saw a pile of rocks, a kern, a man made pyramid of rock that marked the summit. As I reached it and looked to my left, I saw that there was a precipitous ridge leading to the actual summit. At this point I was elated; the sun was out, and I was just a few yards from the real summit.
Like making it to the summit on Mt. Rainier – it is hard to describe the feeling when you actually make it to the top. The pain goes away; the grimace on your face is replaced by a dumb-ass smile, and I skipped along to the actual tippy top of the mountain. It was 9.15 am. Five hours of climbing, not fast by any means, but I made it and that was what counted. I did it solo with an injured arm and (apparently) not enough training.
The view was unbelievable, snowy mountain ranges stretched out into the distance in front of me, the sun was out and warm, the sky was a brilliant blue, and there was not a cloud in sight. I looked back towards Leadville and back down over the route that I had come, the tree line looked an impossibly long way down, and away from me somewhere beyond that, buried in the trees, was the car in the trail head car park, 4,700 feet below me- according to the books. But I was on the highest point in the Rockies, the second highest point in the continental U.S., and it felt like it! I did take a moment to wave to and look down at Mt. Massive – Huh, massive, my ass.
I dropped my pack and sat down, still grinning like an idiot. The first thing that I did was look for the semi-circular rock structure where the summit book was kept, but it was buried under the snow. No matter. I went back to my pack and pulled out my Black Dog Divers dive flag and flew it from one of my hiking poles – claimed by the dog! I would have peed on a water hydrant to mark the area if there had been one up there! I took the usual self portraits, and all in all, I spent 45 minutes messing about up there, sitting and looking out, eating and recovering from the climb up. But, by 9.15 am I had my backpack on and was heading down again.
The climb down was difficult in its own way. Suddenly your toes are pressing on the front of your boots rather than your heels on the back of them. I needed my hiking poles to steady myself on the steeper parts of the climb down, especially down the face of the false summit. Snow and loose rock made it pretty treacherous going.
One of the strange things that I like about the trip down is the fact that you start warming up. The wind had died down so I could slowly peel off the layers. Back at 12,800 feet I took off my hard-shell jacket and pants and hood. I positively bounced through the section of tundra ahead of the tree line discarding the thermal layer under my soft shell jacket and my gloves.
Through that section I bumped into my first climber coming up. We stopped and chatted, and now I could give him chapter and verse about how far he had to climb and that “No, that is not the summit you can see, there are two to go after that!”
When I reached the tree line, I stopped and sat on top of the same log that I had hidden behind, miserable and cold, earlier that morning. I cast off my pack and jacket, put my feet up, ate a bagel and some cheese and drank a lot of water. Now my thoughts turned to getting back to Leadville and claiming my glittering prize – the coffee mug!
The section through the trees seemed much longer than I remembered it coming up – actually I don’t remember much of that first part of the trek. I was focused now on sections of the descent, from the tree line to the start of the Mt. Elbert trail (the wooden sign) and then the 1.25 miles of the Colorado trail to the car park. It is funny how I felt no pain and just marched my way through to the wooden sign.
“Hello, wooden sign” I said. “I guess that we can be friends now.” With that I stopped and took my picture with the sign; we are friends now. I stretched my legs and marched (with only one arm swinging) to the car park and arriving there was the point at which I could truly say that I had done it. WOO HOO!
There is nothing fun about a quick change in one of those park toilets that consist of a concrete raft over a sea of excrement with a funnel sticking out of the middle of the raft with a seat on it. Each time the wind blew outside, it pushed a unique odor up that funnel and into my changing area on the raft. I was glad to exit in my street clothes.
I jumped in the car with my glittering prize firmly in my thoughts, backed up and started to drive down the trail to Leadville. I must have gone about a quarter of a mile when I remembered the thermal layer that I had taken out of my pack at the last minute and stuffed in the wheel arch. I muttered something that was rude, audible to me inside the car, but mute to anybody outside the car other than a lip reader. I spun the car around and headed back to the trail head car park, and there it was right in the middle of the car park covered in dust and with a clear tire mark over it. I opened the door as I was driving and picked it up without stopping, swung the car around and headed back to Leadville.
Once I was off the trail and back on the road, I headed straight to the Alps Motel. I know that the couple that run it are not always there, and sometimes you have to call them to come to the building and check you in. I was on a charge to get to the airport and had no time to wait, so when I pulled into the little car park I was pleased to see a car by the office. However, two long rings of the bell raised nobody, so I had to leave without my glittering prize. I was surprisingly disappointed, but I will call them and have them send me one, a proud and continuous reminder that I finally made it to the top of Mt. Elbert.
Is that the end of the Mt. Elbert story? Am I done and moving on? Not so fast – there are two other routes to the top of the mountain, including the infamous Black Cloud Trail. I suppose that I could climb Mt. Massive and look up at Mt. Elbert.
In the end it took me 5 hours to get to the summit and 3 hours to get back to the car park.
