So this is the beginning of my blog. My brother Jerry told me about this site and how easy it is to make a blog. AND IT'S FREE!! That's a plus.
Jerry moved to Aurora, CO about a month or so ago and has started climbing some of the 14'ers over there. I told him that I wanted to start climbing with him but that I'm not in the best of shape yet. He said, "
Just climb the monument (Scottbluff National Monument) for 5 days in a row and carry 15lbs of water in your pack. You'll be ready".
The week before our planned climb was crazy at home. You guessed it, I didn't do a dang thing to get into shape for this climb. The Thursday (7-19-07) before I was supposed to leave, my eldest boy decided to jump over our 6' privacy fence, thus breaking his left arm. We didn't really know it was broken until Friday. That afternoon, I had to close on my 2nd rental at 1:00pm, go to the doctors office with Gage at 2:00pm and make it over to Jerry's by 6:00pm. What a day!
I ended up getting out of town at 3:00pm and made it to Jerry's by 6:15pm. Quick drive. I loaded up with Jerry and headed over to Leadville, CO and then abou 5 miles south of there. We ended up at the campground just below the trailhead and pitched tents there.
We hit the sack about 10:00pm and around 11:00 or 12:00, it started to rain. Not a lot, just enough to keep you from having a sound sleep. At 5:00am, I rolled over and said, "
Jerry?" and he said, "
yeah". I said, "
You ready to go?" and he said "
yeah". That was the beginning of our trip. Being the good brother that Jerry is, he got up and made a pot of fresh brew coffee. We threw our stuff in the back of his new Nissan XTerra and made our way up to the trailhead of Mt. Elbert.
We started our hike at around 6:15am and started heading upwards. I felt really strong off the start and thought this wasn't going to be that big of a deal. Jerry gave me some pointers on how to breath and how to step and breath at every step. He said that way, when you take 10,000 steps, you take 10,000 breaths.
We started to climb and took a break at about every hour, or 1000'.
Somewhere near 13,000', the elevation and lack of oxygen that I'm used to hit me. Nearing 14,000', it really hit me. I started to slow and slow and slow some more. With about 300' to go, it was tough for me to keep going. But I wasn't about to drive 3 hours and let my little brother show me up. So I treaded on.
We eventually made it to the top, 3 hours and 45 minutes. Pretty good pace Jerry said. He said if you go 1000 per hour, that's good. We went about 1400' per hour.
When we made it to the top, there were about a dozen or so people already there. One guy said that someone else had ran up in 1.5 hours. Unbelievable.
Jerry and I stayed at the top and took a few pictures, changed our socks and headed back down. Quick trip down, figuring it only took us 2 hours to get off the mountain.
All in all, an excellent trip. I already have planned on making another climb in August and have Jerry on board for that one.
