I’m listening to some of the music from the trip right now because I’ve read that music can bring back memories from the time it was last listened to; especially if that moment was significant. Which is awesome unless the last time was in Kansas. Kansas is not significant. But regardless this is what happens when out of shape, underprepared, and inexperienced people set off into the wilderness (other than sometimes dying).
The idea of a cross country road trip had been tossed around between my friend Kyle and I for a couple years now. We had every detail planned and every road mapped out. We were going to see everything the country had to offer. The hours spent in preparation were significant. Each time it was brought up new people were excited to join and then were ultimately unable to for various reasons (mostly completely legitimate). But I bring all this up for one reason. We did not go on this trip. After our last fellow cross-country traveler had to cancel we just decided to hop in a car and head to the Rockies. So this is a story of the most planned impromptu adventure ever.
Breaking and Entering
Not going to talk a lot about the drive out to Colorado for a couple reasons. The first being that it’s a road trip. What was funny to us because it happened in Missouri after 11 hours of driving isn’t funny or interesting to anyone else. And the second reason is that it honestly wasn’t all that bad. When you’re excited to be somewhere it takes an awful lot of the monotony out of getting there.
One thing does need to get mentioned though. Our first night we stopped in Columbia, Missouri. It’s basically the halfway point between Atlanta and Denver. The only reason this matters is that it’s also the home of Missouri University. They have a football stadium. Those are the facts. Everything else from here out is of course speculation and may or may not be true. It’s possible that we brought in people from all around the country that we knew from past jobs and united them under the goal of breaking into the stadium. Put together a flawless plan that worked like clockwork. Perhaps used disguises, distractions, and maybe even a comically fake large nose to somehow gain entry to this impenetrable fortress of a stadium. And all because somehow in the end it would screw over Terry Benedict once again. It’s also possible that someone forgot to lock the door and we walked in. One of those scenarios definitely happened though.
As an aside, Denver and Aspen are amazing. I want to live there. We stayed two nights in Denver and spent the pre-hike morning in Aspen. Both are beautiful. The girls there are as well. And that’s all I got to say about that.
The Actual Hike
One of the coolest things about hiking out west is always the moment when the mountains first come into view. In this case it was the Maroon Bells. Our path was basically a 28 mile loop around the Maroons that took us up into four 12,000 foot passes and then back down into a valley each time. It was incredibly hard at times (giggity) but definitely worth it.
The goal for the first day was to not die make it to the second stream crossing and camp. This would mean we would’ve hiked about seven miles and be in a pretty good spot for day two, which is the most difficult. All this seems pretty straightforward until a few things are factored in.
-The idea that "training" for this was necessary never popped into our heads.
-Their definition of “stream” is a little hard to figure out. At one point we had crossed water three times and had no idea if we’d even done the first “stream crossing”.
-Our ability to read a map. Bit of a struggle on day one.
-Day one is completely uphill.
Short term memory loss
On any kind of significant hike there will be lots of uphill and downhill with down obviously being the easier of the two. I guess it had been awhile since I’d been on a good hike as I had completely forgotten just how different your body handles the two scenarios when you have 25 lbs of supplies on your back (The altitude doesn’t help). I felt like the entire time this scene was playing out in my mind:
Uphill: “Ok this is super hard. Was not prepared for this at all. Maybe it’s time to look for a boulder to pin my arm under like James Franco.”
Downhill: “I am killing this hike. I’m not saying we’re gonna finish faster than any man has done before but it’s certainly not out of the question.”
Really Uphill: “OH DEAR GOD BRING ONE OF YOUR MANY BEARS TO FINISH ME!!!! (…..break in thought to heave in oxygen….) I REQUEST (….more oxygen heaving….) BEAR CLAW (….just a bit more….) TO THE FACE (….super out of shape remember….) NOW!!!!”
Really Downhill: “BRING ME BEARS TO BE CONQUERED!!!!! I WILL HAVE TROPHIES TO BRING BACK TO MY TRIBE!!!!!”
/pauses to salute a passing bald eagle
/eagle salutes back
“A RUCKUS IS BEING BROUGHT TO YOUR DOORSTEP MOTHER NATURE!!!!”
Flat: “Well this is quite lovely scenery.”
At some point we did kind of get our legs under us and made some decent time, finally arriving at Crater Lake. Crater is basically the start of the actual loop that we hiked. From Crater we turned right following a large creek, when we should’ve gone straight following a stream (Thank you for the great detail map maker, not at all confusing…). Fast forward fifteen minutes and we finally figure out the nearly vertical “path” we’re climbing, looks like a path simply because it’s where the rock/land slides happen. So not ideal. Especially since we’re now halfway up it and the land slides have left us with nothing to hold onto to get back down. No choice but to try something so Kyle to his credit went first; though the roles would reverse later on in what Bear Grylls would call a “hairy situation” (cross foreshadowing off your literary bingo board). Kyle worked his way down using tree roots that were slightly exposed by the erosion and the occasional rock that would immediately give way under weight. It was fairly badass I must say. After he was down I went with the slightly different approach of “be careful at the beginning, get bored in the middle, and then see if it is possible to turn sideways and grind the mountain like a snowboarder”. And if the mountain happens to be made entirely of loose rock and dirt, it is. The more you know.
After we made it back down we macheted (with no machete) our way back to the actual path and set off in the right direction. After we hiked a mile or so a thunderstorm moved in and unloaded on us. We took cover under a small grove of pine trees near the edge of the stream. The way you perceive storms is just different in the mountains. The knowledge that every minute the rain continues is a minute of daylight you needed to get to camp and that the streams you’re about to have to cross are getting precariously high make waiting out a storm feel a tad more helpless than normal. It has a way of magnifying that tiny thought in the back of your mind of “if anything goes wrong, we’re days away from help”. The storm lasted for about 30 minutes and then we set out on our way.
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| The white area is the snow bridge. The river runs the full length under it. |
The stream crossing turned out to be right around the corner. And by “stream crossing” I mean the path disappeared into the stream and then reappeared 20 feet away on the other side with up to your waist rapids in-between. We searched up and downstream for a while looking for a better crossing with very little luck until I remembered something on one of the trip reports we read about this hike; somewhere upstream is a snow bridge. We hiked that way and eventually came across it, looking every bit as dangerous as snow bridges tend to look. I threw a rock on the edge to see if the snow bridge would hold up under its weight; it did not. As night was coming soon however there really wasn’t much choice so we took a chance and crossed it. Obviously we made it. So there you go everyone, turns out the whole “snow bridges are super dangerous” thing was a myth the whole time. I encourage you and your children to go run amuck. We hiked another ten minutes or so and set up camp for the night.
Day 2 in the woods…mountains. There were woods there too of course.
The way the campsites are set up on the trail causes hikers to go over two passes on day 2 in order to be in position for day 3. We had to ford a pretty swiftly moving stream up to our knees this day as well. I got to the middle and lost my balance but thankfully there was a super soft rock to break my face’s fall so it didn’t hit that rocklike water. Honestly though I will take a rock to the face over 35 degree water to my junk any day. In my past experiences (playing Oregon Trail) there had always been an Indian guide there to trade with for passage across. I'm unsure when this system went out of use but apparently attempting to trade raccoon pelts for someone's sister is now frowned upon as well. Noted. After crossing the stream we turned up the valley heading for the first pass, West Maroon. Both passes (the other is Frigid Air Pass) are at about 12,500 feet and are really difficult. They tend to be harder though if one of your party is an idiot and forgets to drink water and gets dehydrated. My bad. Had to break constantly because of this and nearly passed out once which I can’t imagine is a good thing to do at 12,000 feet. Oddly enough what got me up the mountain, other than Kyle’s energy bars I ate, were two songs that just wouldn’t leave my head. Neither one is at all wilderness related or applicable (Though Rosie Perez is mentioned in one and I guess some of the mountains could be called “Rosie Perez” like) but for whatever reason having a verse that just repeated constantly took my mind off the task. DO NOT listen to these at work. Or if you dislike hip hop. Or if you’re my mother.
Kanye.
Childish Gambino.
Day 3: No bears.......YET!!!!
At some point during this day I remember thinking, “If we ever do this trip again, a fanny pack would not be a bad idea.” I’d always heard wilderness changes a man; was unaware complete 180 on lifelong fanny pack opinion was a possibility. But day 3 is better remembered as being by far the most dangerous thing we did. Prepare to have your knees feel a bit weaker than usual Kate Upton. That’s right; prepare to enter the danger zone. I promise that doesn't link to what you think it does. It also doesn't link to a google search of Kate, as I cannot go with you on that journey.
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| It's the beautiful ones that always seem to bring the most trouble. And now you may check off "thinly veiled metaphor". |
About halfway down the trail we come to a field of boulders that seem to have been part of a landslide that wiped out the trail. The boulder field was about 30 yards across and then after about another forty yards of snow I see the trail beginning again down the mountain. So across the landslide we go. The best way I can describe this is to imagine you were walking across a Jenga board made of really big rocks. Every step is onto a rock you’re not 100% sure isn’t the one holding up all the other rocks above it. Step on the wrong one and you get to dodge an avalanche (If you can dodge an avalanche, you can dodge a ball). So we slowly worked our way across and after ten or fifteen minutes made it to the snow. The half of a football field of slick snow/ice we had to now cross was sloped at about a sixty degree angle. A slip would mean sliding halfway down the mountain into either rocks or trees. Fun! I was leading the way on this one, which meant I got to make all the footholds. So I kicked deep into snow five or six times every step while balancing on my other foot and two hiking poles. Just doing my job ma’am. Took forever but we did eventually make it. Completely fine with never doing that again. We had another two miles or so of relatively easy hiking that night then found our final campsite. This would be the last time Kyle got to perform his nightly ritual of crawling into the tent, throwing on a cowboy hat, then turning to me and saying, “I won’t quit you.” Hey, we’re not here to judge. We're here to believe everything we read without questioning it.
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| Last campsite. Fairly similar to the others in appearance and in abundance of steroid filled porcupines. |
Day 4: We didn't actually see any bears.
The next morning we woke up at six to make sure we were out in time to catch the shuttle back to Aspen where our car was. The hike up to the last pass might’ve been my favorite of the whole trip. The views were incredible and it never got all that difficult. Plus by this time we could finally breathe normally again (And yes, the first day off the mountains breathing in oxygen filled air you do feel like a superhero). Once we were at the top it was only about three miles to the parking lot and the shuttle. Since it was all downhill it was basically a sprint to the finish. Loved seeing the shuttle bus almost as much as I loved the big-mac and large fries it drove me to. Though this ended up being one of the hardest things I've ever done, I think the experience was a bit of a drug for me. Now that it's over I want another hit. There are a million things I want to accomplish on this planet and hundreds of places I want to see but it turns out the middle of the rockies is going to be tough to beat. I remember being at the top of one of the passes overlooking a new valley to explore, turning to Kyle and remarking, "I'm not sure there are ten places in the world more beautiful than this." And I'm really not sure there are.
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Kind of an epilogue, or a eulogy if you take the phrase "bored to death" seriously.
Which brings us to Kansas. It’s horrible. We drove through it twice and that's a sentence that is still tough to write. I get Vietnam-like flashbacks of the traumatic experience. Corn is lobbed at me like grenades and all I want is for it to blow up and end the nightmare BUT IT NEVER DOES. That would be too thrilling. It’s landscape is flatter and more boring than your girlfriend (I'm not sure who "you" is here...but let's assume "you" lives in Kansas). You know how when you cross into Florida you start seeing a bunch of signs and billboards for Disney World? Well as soon as you cross into Kansas you are bombarded by signs giving you the much needed heads up that in just 200 miles you can see the WORLD’S LARGEST PRAIRE DOG!!!! Also they have rattlesnakes. Seriously these signs line the roads of the entire state. Any chance the extraterrestrials that keep making those crop circles could go ahead and take the state over? It’ll take like ten of you. Their only cool feature is the thousands of windmills and even Don Quixote would tell you that’s not all that impressive. Oh, and best of all? Kansas is well aware of what it has to offer so it gently extends its middle finger to you by making you pay a toll to drive through it.
