Some buddies and I decided to go backpacking in the San Isabel national forest in colorado last weekend. What a fantastic trip we had. We hiked three 14'ers in two days - Mt. Missouri, Mt. Belford, and Mt. Oxford. For those of you who do not know what a 14'er is, it is a mountaint whose peak is 14,000 feet or greater, and rises 300 feet above the next adjacent mountain. There are 53 I believe in colorado, the tallest of which is Mt Elbert at 14,433. The above links will give you some stats and pictures of those peaks if you are interested. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of my own at this time.
The weather was perfect, but us lowlanders where in for a harder time than we imagined. We were definetly huffing and puffing, a couple got pretty bad altitude sickness, but we made it with no injuries or no one tumbling off the mountain. I discovered trekking poles for the first time as I bought some before leaving. I've done a fair amount of hiking / backpacking, but I won't be doing any more without poles. They really are helpful and work great as a lightning rod on top of the peak. Hiking companions appreciate knowing they will be the second ones hit.
It had been a while since I have tackled anything this arduous, and I had forgotten how deceptive hiking can be. It is tempting to look across a valley, up over a ridge, up at a peak, etc and say to your self, oh that doesn't look that bad, only to find when you get up close that was the worse thing you could have done.
I'll post some pictures when I get them from the others as I did not take a camera.
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3 comments:
Well thanks a lot sonny. I was there last week too. Why didn't we hook up? No wait, that was a dream. Aw man! No fair!
I remember you and micah and mountains and hiking....those were the "trek poless" days!!
I thought of it many times...mt, remember the "rock slide" we went down? Scared the bejeebees out of both of us. and the freeze dried meals? thats what we ate this time. sure does funny stuff to your insides.
When are we going to do a reunion trip? lets go. We'll take the women and leave them in Denver.
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