Wherein I travel up a mountain…

To be perfectly honest, yesterday was AWESOME. I had the distinct pleasure of being shown around Mount Evans by
and her wonderful family. We took frequent stops for me to take some pictures, however I want to do them justice and cull through the bad ones before posting a bunch up here.

As we started up the mountain, I was very interested to watch the scale of the trees as we progressed. They went from very thick and majestic to twisted, gnarled, and kind’ve scrubby looking as we progressed upwards, to none at all once we were up to a certain elevation. I saw a great deal of bristlecone pine trees, which are known to be the single oldest living organism on Earth. I also saw a marmit, one of the oddest looking critters on Earth.

There were a few observation points throughout the mountain that were just brilliant. One that we stopped at was near the summit and up over 11,000 ft above sea level. Let me start by telling you that I checked ahead of time with on what proper mountain attire was. Her husband said to plan for around 50-60 degrees for this time of year, so I wore a long sleeved shirt and opted not to lug my jacket or trenchcoat through airport security.

Yeah… it was 29 degrees at this lookout, and it got down to 22 degrees at the summit of the mountain. There was hellacious winds and snow, but the views were unreal. There was a few small cabins to let people get out of the elements, and their kids were freezing so I opted to stay in the lookout and take some pictures while and her husband took a frigid ten minute hike around a ridge. They came back 3/4 frozen and we made our way to the summit.

At the top of the mountain, there was a scientific observatory that had been built in the 40’s and partially destroyed by some sort of explosion in the 70’s. They converted it to a cool lookout, and I was able to take a few really neat pictures from up there.

The elevation was really getting to me by the end of the trip. I had a headache and even walking 20 feet at a normal pace made me feel like I had worked out for roughly an hour nonstop. My intrepid tour guides said it was even bothering them this time around, they remarked that the cold probably wasn’t helping matters much.

On our way down the mountain, we stopped at a rest area where we ran across a guy and a girl stopped on a motorcycle. The girl said that her boyfriend was really sick, he was from the Air Force and was somewhat sure it was altitude sickness (which they warned you about on a sign near the summit) and that she was looking for someone to take her down the mountain so he could balance their motorbike easier and get down the mountain himself. We made room in the van and let the guy travel in front of us once he was somewhat stable again, his girlfriend explained that he was dizzy, nauseous, and was having trouble balancing the both of them on the motorcycle with all the turns.

Once down the mountain, we stopped at Echo Lake for a few pictures and then made our way to a place called Beau Jo’s to have a three pound meat pizza. It was tasty, however I am paying the price in greasebombs all day today.

Interestingly, my headache never really went away until I took some Excederin a few hours ago. The guys that I am training with out here were 100% sure it was the altitude, and that I needed to drink water and conserve my energy. I drank a ton of complimentary water at the training session, came back to the hotel, took my Excederin and slept for three hours. Now I’m feeling much better, in fact I might go down and use the hotel hot tub for a bit.

Tomorrow is the real excitement, I get to drive myself to the training and then give the JKA of Colorado a try!