Pikes Peak - The Epic Day

Okay so I know last week I was giving you a teaser of our Pike's Peak epic hike and I'm just now getting around to writing the blog for it. So sorry about that.
So we got up pretty early so that we could start climbing around 7am. James said that if we kept a decent pace that we should get to the top in about 5 hours. Our friend Amy was going to make the hour long drive to pick us up at the top so we didn't have to hitchhike. We told her we'd be at the top at about 12:00-12:30.
We parked got all our crap together, snapped a couple piccies, and we were on our way. We couldn't have asked for better weather. I was right behind James and trying to keep up with his pace. Mind you I had only been in Colorado for 3 days and my acclimating systems were a bit behind. :) So we were cruising along and were about 2 hours in when I felt something in my shoe. I thought it was a rock so I sat down to get it out. One thing I forgot to mention is that I was wearing Mary (James' wife's shoes). I didn't bring any proper hiking shoes so I wore her Nike's that were about a half size too big, but the night before it was like 11pm and I was really tired so when I tried them on with her baggy wool socks I just half-assed it and said, "yeah these fit okay." In hindsight I'm a JACKASS cuz' everybody knows that if you're going on a 5 freakin' hour hike your shoes NEED to fit! So I sit down and notice that there aren't any rocks coming out of the shoe, but instead I've got two blisters the size of nickels. "Ahhh crap!!" was the first thing I thought and then "We're still making it to the top!" was my second thought. There was no way I was going to turn around because of a couple blisters. I got up and we trucked on. We actually only made it about 50 feet when I had to pull over again and used some duct tape to see if that would help. Right when I stook up and took a few steps it felt great, but about 10 feet later it was killing me again. I ended up putting 2 pairs of socks on and just waited for them to go numb and then things were just peachy.
We didn't really stop after that even when we got to Barr Camp, which is supposed to be about half-way. By then we had been hiking for bout 3 hours. I watched Barr Camp come and go and sort of got the wind knocked out of my sails because I could have used a 5 minute break. Right after we passed Barr Camp huge piles of snow about 50 feet long started to sprout up. No biggie though. I mean A-Frame (the last stop before the top) was only 15 min. away. Or so James said! We had been following the dirty shoe marks in the snow to know if there was a switchback or if the trail went straight, but after awhile there weren't any shoe marks. Probably cuz' there weren't too many other idiots that were going to hike to the top that day. I mean there was a shit-ton of snow on top. An hour later at about 13,000 we had made two wrong turns because there weren't any dirty shoe marks in the snow, but we eventually found our way to A-Frame. By now we had been climbing for 4 hours and my left foot had two blisters while my right had three. Sweet!!



We stopped for just a few minutes at A-Frame and had a look up. The trail pretty much ended there and the only thing we could see were some prints in the snow from snowshoes! Yeah..all we had were our tennies! Uh-Oh. Many people would have turned back at this point, but not us. AKA...Dumb and Dumber! It looked like we could make it in probably 2 hours. HAHA!! Or so we thought. We started up and instead of going where James knew the trail was we followed the snoeshoe tracks. So I just started following him up. We made it about 20 feet before James was in freakin' knee deep snow!! And yet we still kept climbing. About 30 minutes later two guys were coming down and we asked how it was up there. They said they made it about a mile from the top and turned around because there was so much snow. HAHA!! And yes...we kept climbing with our little running shoes.


I think the lack of oxygen had me thinking I was Lynn Hill or something because at that point I was NOT turning around. James kept saying that going straight up the face was the way to go and I kept saying that we should veer to the right and go up sort of horizontal. If we went straight up the face the pitch was at least 30% with knee deep snow. So we went James's way and after another hour of climbing I finally snapped. I was like..."dude...we NEED to go to the right. It'll be easier!!!" After he tried to convince me again straight up was the way to go I lost it and took a step out onto the snow and tried to start up the climb. All of a sudden I was in waist deep snow! So I"m still pissed so I try to take another step to get out of it, but things were just not going my way. So now I'm two giant steps in, stuck, and pissed off!! I think at that point I was shouting..."GAWD DAMMNIT!!", and James had to be laughing on his insides. So now I needed his help to get back to the rock a couple feet behind me. Gawd that was funny!! Definitely not funny then, but funny now. After he pulled me back I let him lead so that he could break the trail for me. There would be about 20 feet of snow between each huge boulder so we were just trying to make it from one boulder to another. At one point I swore I heard horses! We took pictures the whole time except in the last hour cuz' we were both at the breaking point of being tired, a bit hungry, and at the very end pretty damn cold.
7 hours later we made our last push to the top and into the tourist shop on top. James just gave me a big hug once we got up there. I swear I felt like I just climbed Everest and we were only at 14,110 feet! Everest base camp is 17,000. Man I don't know how they do it, but I envy anybody that gives Everest a go.
So there it is. Our epic jaunt up Pikes Peak. Oh and here are some little tidbits that we found out after we climbed it that day. We were two of the four people that had summited that day. The other two people (the prepared smart people) were the ones with the snowshoes that blazed a bit of a trail for us (the not so prepared schmucks). I guess we were only the 5th and 6th people to have summited it this year. And I guess they had to rescue two army cadets from the mountain the week before. Umm...so I was feeling pretty proud of the both of us for staying mentally strong. Don't mind the horse comment earlier. hehe.