Mount of the Holy Cross, Colorado

From the very first moment I saw the Rocky Mountains, I have loved them. They are steep and moody and mysteriously dark and snow covered—even in the summer. They’re foreboding and comfortingly huge. I think I love them partly because they intimidate me. And I have good reason to believe they tried to kill me.

Here’s how.

Andrew and I met at school. I can’t say I specifically remember meeting him; we both came in as freshman, we worked together and we somehow fell into a friendship. I think we had a couple classes together as well, but I’m really not able to pin down a specific time thinking “yeah, we’re friends”.

Andrew is tall, quiet and habitually serious. His signature fashion statement is a leather Indiana Jones hat—sometimes with a squirrel skin tucked into the folded brim. He’s a little bit of a modern Davy Crocket or Daniel Boone. He’s the kind of man that if you were to just drop him off in the wilderness with only his knife and bare hands, he could singlehandedly build himself a city. He is a solitude seeker, an adventurer and, I believe, one of the last true explorers.

And somehow, with this great adventurer, I ended up in Colorado, to climb Mt. of the Holy Cross. At 14,005 this mountain has barely squeezed itself on Colorado’s “14er” list, but even 14,005 is daunting when the highest mountain I had ever hiked was somewhere around the embarrassing height of 3,000 feet.

The details of getting the trip together are miniscule. Little true planning, mixed together with a lot of enthusiasm, as my favorite trips usually are. After throwing some clothes into a backpack, meeting the other girl who was coming to Colorado with us, and climbing into his 1990’s Toyota Tacoma, we set out. 8 hours to Colorado. Squished together—me in the middle with my legs tangled around the stick-shift. Uncomfortably close to both Andrew and our other travelling companion, Megan. She and I had not met until the day we left, and as it turns out, she and I have a lot in common, and managed to talk for 8 hours without hardly pausing to breathe. I’m not sure if Andrew enjoyed listening, or not. It doesn’t really matter now. I had a blast.

We stayed in Estes park the first night, at his mom’s house. We arrived late. His mom was at work, and only his younger sister, Arlana, was home. We talked to her for a while, then crashed into our beds, exhausted.

We slept in too late, and woke up long after sunrise to look out the window onto the Rocky Mountains. Grandeur at its finest. If you haven’t been to the Rockies I don’t recommend going, I’m telling you that You. Must. Go. They’re unlike any other mountains I have ever experienced. They are wilder than the Appalachians of the east coast, more daunting than the stretches of the Sierra Nevada’s that I experienced, and overwhelmingly beautiful.

We spent that day exploring Rocky Mountain National Park and downtown Estes Park—a typical touristy, but adorably cute town.

Rocky Mountain National Park is my favorite national park—maybe because I have spent the most time there, maybe because I haven’t been to all of the others, but it is stunning. The air was seductively crisp, and the birch trees were just losing the last of their brilliant golden leaves. No snow had fallen yet, so the higher altitude roads were still open, and we spent the morning driving through the park.

That evening we, including Arlana, drove out to our base camp. We got there later than anticipated, and reached our campsite as it was getting dark. It’s easy to forget how quickly temperatures drop when you’re at 10,000 ft., and the air was cold by the time we went to bed. I didn’t have a good sleeping bag, and was staying in a hammock to sleep, so I pulled a hot stone out of the fire, wrapped it in an old t-shirt and slid it into my sleeping bag with me for the night. That helped. It was still cold.

4:00 AM came quickly (Maybe it was 5:00, I don’t remember). The air was colder than before, and a milky black. We packed up camp, slowly and sleepily and Andrew boiled water for a breakfast of oatmeal. I can’t say I have ever loved eating oatmeal, but that morning my stomach was restless. I choked down as many bites as I could, and drank some water.

We set out hiking before dawn.

We had 12 miles to hike in total, and around 4,000 feet in elevation to gain. The one problem is that the route we were taking, requires you to climb to 11,000 to cross a ridge line, then back down to 10,000, before starting the actual ascent. It’s more frustrating than difficult.

I will admit, the light from the sunrise was amazing.

Add sunrises to that list of my favorite things.

The altitude was catching up to Megan and I, so we had to go slowly. After living at Lincoln’s 1,176 foot elevation (true fact, I googled it.), 10,000 is a bit overwhelming. We kept hiking but as the day wore on, all three of the girls started to feel kind of sick.

We finally reached the boulder field above tree line a little after 12:00. Just enough time to get to the top, and come back down below tree-line before 3:00PM. If you haven’t climbed anywhere above tree-line in Colorado, about 3:00PM is when the thunderstorms typically roll in, and one of the worst places you can be during a thunderstorm is the tallest thing at 14,000 feet, surrounded by nothing but boulders.

By this time, I was feeling rather miserable. But we kept climbing. Somewhere around 13,000 feet I threw up. Not one of my finer moments, I’ll admit. I always thought throwing up in front of people would be very embarrassing, (you know, one of those childhood fears of throwing up in class, or in the lunchroom or something) but at that point I felt so bad I didn’t care—which was actually kind of relieving.

I did feel better after that, just blamed it on the pizza we ate the day before and we kept climbing. It was obviously altitude sickness, but I didn’t have much of a headache, so I just convinced myself it was the pizza.

By 13,300 I was starting to feel sick again, but it wasn’t unbearable. Andrew kept asking if I thought I would be okay. I said yes.

By 13,400 we sat down to rest and I felt, dramatically, that I was going to die. I have literally never felt that awful in my life. It was hard to breathe and my breath felt raspy and too fast. I was nauseated and felt like I was suffocating.

It was just 600 more vertical feet. A few more minutes of quick climbing and we would be there. And I realize that it sounds dramatic now, but I seriously felt like I was dying there, laying on that boulder.

So I called it, and by that I mean I just shook my head when Andrew asked if I wanted to go down. Talking was physically exhausting. So, we started hiking back down. If I am completely honest, I don’t remember much of the hike back. I know Megan didn’t feel well either but it’s all very hazy. Just trying not to fall, not being able to breathe. Everything was dizzy, spinning. Blurry.

I remember throwing up once more. Maybe two. I don’t remember. Andrew carried my backpack. Every time I sat down waves of exhaustion crashed over me. We stopped a lot. It was hard to talk—words took too much effort. Each time we stopped Andrew would count my breaths per minute. I think he said something about it being 30 breaths at one point. (I think that’s bad) I just remember not being able to catch my breath, even sitting down. I think I fell asleep for a few minutes when we rested. It didn’t help. I felt like I had been running for hours and hours and just couldn’t get enough air into my lungs.

It was awful.

As we hiked further down, I started feeling better. I could breathe better. I actually felt like talking again. We got back to the truck after dark and drove to our hotel.

After a good night’s sleep and a little food, we all felt a lot better. Andrew and Arlanas’ dad picked us up and took us out to coffee in the morning before we left. He took us to the most adorable little coffee shop in Eagle CO. Yeti’s Grind I think.

I can’t say that that hike is something I want to do again (and by that I mean the altitude sickness part), but I will go back and climb that stupid mountain sometime.

But until then, I’ll settle for Californian Adventures and smaller mountains.

And next time I’ll drink more water.