Rocky Mountain High...=(

"Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit."
-E.E. Cummings

What was supposed to be a 4 hour roundtrip hike up the 14,000 ft. Mt. Biersted (I kept calling it "Beer Stein"), turned into a 16 hour, MISERABLE attempt at hiking my first "14er."

Where to even begin...so my former New York roomate, Kinsy Hood, thought it would be a good idea for me to meet her friends from undergrad, one of whom is now living in Denver and actually going to the same grad school as me: meet Blake Bowyer; and the other friend who happened to be visiting Denver last weekend: meet Tom Harris Jr.

So Blake and Tom invite me to hike my first 14er. THey both show up to my apt at 6am in shorts and Blake in flip-flops. I think "oh! dress for summer weather!" Check. I've got a few layers on, but nothing worthy of hiking in the Himalayas. We drive about an hour in our 2 car, 6 person caravan, out into the mountains heading up to the trailhead, until we come to a roadblock: "Road Closed for Pending Rock Slide."

Several other cars are parked at the barrier with one quite chipper woman (for that hour of the morning) convincing us that the trailhead is only 2 miles away. We can walk 2 miles. So we set out, COLD, but assuming we'll warm up once the sun comes up and we start moving...

THREE MILES LATER, we are still not at the trailhead. We come to a fork in the road and decide to head up the right fork. A small Nissan Rogue with an Englishman behind the wheel and his disgruntled girlfriend in the passenger seat rolls up. "HOW in the WORLD did a CAR get up here?!" was the first thing out of my mouth (Apparently there is a back road.)

They are LOST. We are LOST. And several girls who we've picked up at the intersection are ALSO LOST. What do we do?... TEN of us pile into the quite compact Nissan Rogue. We take off up the right fork, bouncing along the dirt road, waiting for the tires to pop at any second from the weight...several miles later we reach a DEAD END. Back to the intersection. Up the left fork, we pass several other hikers on foot, we manage to squeeze one more into the car making ELEVEN, though the back won't close, and continue on....a total of FIVE miles later, we arrive at the trailhead. Thank God! The sun is shining, the mountain doesn't look so high, we begin the ascent.

Needless to say, hiking in the Colorado Rockies at high elevation in summer clothes is NEVER a good idea. Not even in the summer, and especially NOT in OCTOBER. By 13,000 feet, our group has split up, with Tom and me taking up the rear...the two "out-of-towners" who are not only FREEZING, but also barely able to catch their breath thanks to altitude sickness, having to stop every THREE STEPS on the steep, boulder and snow strewn mountainside with a biting wind cutting into us. Tom and I make it 13,300 ft: completely MISERABLE, NUMB, and unsure how I'm ever going to make it down, let alone make it to the summit first. We turn around, decidedly proud of our first attempt considering ill-preparation.

The descent was no less depressing: not only did we have to make it back to the trailhead, we had to hike the COUNTLESS miles back through the intersection and down the mountain to the barrier where our cars were waiting. Fortunately, several others in our group met up with us on the hike down, along with the Englishman and his girlfriend. They offered us a ride from the trailhead down to the barrier, after which we still had a mile to hike down to the car. With half our party still descending Mt. Bierstad, three of us hopped in the car and began the 1 1/2 hour drive AROUND the BASE of the MOUNTAIN to the mysterious back road, so that we could drive up to the trailhead to pick up our friends. After a handful of wrong turns, stops for directions, and a bag of hotdogs to bring our stranded friends, we meet them halfway up the backside of the mountain, where they had hitched a ride down after a miserably cold wait at the trailhead. GREAT. Hot dogs get eaten, everyone's in the car, we can go home. OH WAIT. We still have another CAR at the barrier on the OTHER SIDE of the MOUNTAIN. So we drive another 1 1/2 hours back around the mountain to where we began our hike at the roadblock. 9pm rolls around. And we're just now heading home.

Blake DID amazingly summit Mt. Bierstad in his FLIP FLOPS and shorts. Feeling terrible for not better preparing Tom and me, he bought us dinner and invited us over to use the hot-tub. Happiness FINALLY was.

Welcome to Colorado. In other news, having been here just over a month, I've found a job, an apt, and a great roomate I met my 2nd day of orientation (who just so happens be a SeattleU alum and who just so happens to be friends with my good friends in Seattle: Patrick McLennan). I'm also already in the midst of mid-terms and I just got here! For the first time, my Auntie Care and I have gotten to spend lots of quality time together, as she hosted me at her very posh "retreat" house my first three weeks in Denver. :) I also ran into my college roomate from my sophomore year at SeattleU: Ashley Marks. Turns out she's in my program at DU as well! Small world, as always.

Happy trails,
Hana T.