One of my goals this summer is to take 6 new people to the summits of 14ers. And completely by coincidence, my mom just happened to have scheduled a trip out for the birthday celebration of a good friend in Denver this past weekend. I mean, how completely crazy is it that the proverbial stars could have possibly lined up so perfectly? Even in the midst of friend birthday celebrations from both my side and mom's, college visits to help with the "business" aspect of her visit, back to school nights and other goings on in life, we were determined not to let this opportunity go to waste.
Mom was only in town from Saturday until Wednesday, and the only real chance with the time to tackle a 14er would be Tuesday. Fortunately, I had to teach a kickboxing class at 6:15 that morning, and the kids needed to get to school shortly after that, so instead of the typical 2:00 AM departure I was used to, we had a great excuse to shove off closer to 8:30.
But where to go? I asked mom if she had any hiking gear...shoes, backpack, pants, etc. Nope. But she did have some long black pants. And she had tennis shoes that were generally lousy to hike anywhere in, but matched her red jacket perfectly. Of course her red jacket was more cotton, so it was completely ineffective as a wind breaker, but fortunately I, myself, had a red wind breaker that still pretty much matched her shoes, and so the day was saved. (those stars aligning yet again). So no gear, black pants and bad shoes that matched a borrowed jacket. Mt. Evans it would be.
We left Longmont about 8:15, listening to comedians on the comedy channel while checking Facebook...you know, the typical things you do to get mentally prepared for outings of this nature. I was expecting a 2 hour drive to Mt. Evans from Longmont, but about 30 minutes in, our perfectly aligned stars unraveled spectacularly.
Oftentimes, the road to the trail head can be more of a challenge than the actual hike itself, especially in the front range where many people cram the narrow, rough roads to the tail heads of popular peaks. Unfortunately, I had not considered that I-76 (some 50 miles away from Mt. Evans) would be such a road. For at least 5 miles and over the course of an extra hour, we stop and go'd at a frustrating pace, inching slowly toward our challenge...50 miles away. Aaron was done with school at 2:30 that afternoon, so we were in a time crunch. Typical hikers would have certainly turned back in the face of such adversity, but our determination to summit superseded most of our common sense, so onward we pressed....
There are many routes to the summit of Evans...West Ridge via Chicago Creek, the Northeast Face, West Ridge via Mt. Spaulding and the steep North Face were just a few of our options. After careful consideration of our long traffic delay, we decided the the best option would probably be Mt. Evans Road...via Honda Pilot. We exited the interstate at Idaho Springs and drove about 17 miles upward to Summit Lake at the base of Mt. Evans (as shown in the first picture above). Although we didn't have the ideal gear or footwear, we parked and hoofed it the .2 miles (one way) to an OFFICIAL trail head sign.
As we made our way back to the parking lot, we remembered a sign we saw on the I-70 road to the trail head (also very crowded) that warned us to watch for wildlife.
Sure enough, just below the summit of Mt. Evans, we saw a ram sitting on the rocks, probably also contemplating the best route to take to the summit. We felt very fortunately that we had seen that sign as we spent 5 minutes passing under it to warn us about the possibility of such an occurrence.
Back to the car we went. It was about 5 more miles up some very shelfy, narrow, completely paved road to the summit parking lot (the highest paved road in the US, if we want to be specific). Now "shelfy" in this case means that on the outward side of the road, the transition from pavement to hundreds of feet of thin air is, well, instantaneous. No shoulder. Not even a bike lane. Mom was really excited to be a passenger on this part, especially when the gentle transition from relaxing drive to plummeting death was on her side of the car. But I gently reassured her that I hadn't lost a hiking partner yet, and I didn't intend to on this day either. I'm generally good about focusing on the road in situations li...wait, is that a herd of mountain goats on that hill???? It IS!!! What mom, I shouldn't take a picture of them? Ok, fine....
We ascended many switchbacks with truly stunning views (which of course I was paying no attention to at the time) and reached the parking lot at the summit of Mt. Evans. We got out of the car and saw the switchbacks that climbed another rocky 100 feet or so up to the true summit, but fortunately we also saw a much more impressive sign indicating the Mt. Evans summit on the other side of the parking lot, with exactly zero more feet of elevation gain between it and our vehicle. Our true hike would be begin right here. THIS was the moment we had anticipated for the past 3 hours, and it was upon us!! Time to put up or shut up. Go time. Let's do this! Leeerooooooooooooooooy Jeeeeeeeeeeenkins!!!!!!!
We took that all important first step. Then another. And then we were there. The Mt. Evans summit sign!!!
Mom's very first 14er, with the true summit smiling approvingly in the background just behind her.
We made it. The stars were all for us. Then they were against us, but we shook that off and bravely achieved our goal while they were all for us again. We walked through and learned about the fascinating history of the observatory on the summit and took in the views to the east and southwest. After about 10 minutes, hunger got the best of us, and we began the drive back down, still riding the rush of having been close enough to smell the summit of the 14th highest 14er in Colorado. After some great burgers at Tommyknockers Pub in Idaho Springs, we still made it back to Longmont just in time to pick up Aaron from school. The day was a success.
Thanks, mom, for one of the most unique and rewarding 14er excursions I've done to date. If you ever get the itch to tackle another, you can always borrow my jacket but we may want to check out some different hiking shoes. Red of course.
No comments:
Post a Comment