It is dark, raining, thundering, and lightening, but NOTHING can dampen, or take away from the fact that we made the summit of Long’s Peak this afternoon!
It was no easy task, I assure you. In fact, not all of us made it, only 3 of the 6 did. That would be Jonathan, Lamarr, and I.
I feel kind of bad for the other guys. One of them just had a “bad feeling” about the whole thing, another realized that he was afraid of heights when we got to the “narrows”, and the other guy was nervous about the weather, which was looking pretty bad and can turn very nasty, very fast. Those three DID make it up to 14,000’, which is still no small accomplishment.
These three had decided to leave while I was waiting under a large boulder/cave for the weather to clear. The other two guys came up to where I was and we waited… I told them that I was “…prepared to wait in this cave for the rest of the day if I have to, but I am GOING TO MAKE THE SUMMIT!” haha
Turned out, the weather cleared up in about twenty minutes. We strapped on our gear and climbed up a very steep 200’ snow/ice bank to the summit.
The view was AMAZING!
We found a capsule up there with a parchment inside with the scribbled names of those who had made it. Totally cool. We signed our names and the date there.
The hike up was grueling, maybe even harder that running in that 70.3 Ironman last year, but the hike back down was even worse because I started snowing pretty hard. That turned into sleet and freezing rain the further down the mountain we got. The granite boulders were really slick with the water. Not cool.
Anyway, by the time we got down, I was absolutely exhausted, just drained.
After some Excedrin migraine and a little food, I started feeling better.
The guys who had gone down before us, were flipping out a little, and really just over reacting because they had been worried about us. Apparently, we had taken too long to get down and there had been a really bad storm on their side of the mountain. I guess we should have given some sort of time frame on when we would be down. Oh well. Live and learn.
This was the best trip ever!
This was the last entry in my written journal. I'll be posting a bunch of photos and explanations from here on ou. Get ready. haha.
KoP
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